Please please baby sleep help at 9mo - am desperate

[AtlasLand]

I know it's a question that people always ask on here but I'm desperate so any help you can give I'd be so grateful!

My 9mo dd started waking up in the night frequently at about 8mo. Before that she slept through the night. At first we were feeding her (she is FF) but having found out about sleep regressions we decided to wean her off the milk at night- we did this cold turkey and it was fine. She was clearly only taking milk for comfort. However, she is still waking up loads. Is there anything else I can do? I'm shattered beyond belief at the moment and struggling with no childcare bubble or help. I don't know how I go on.

She is frequently waking due to rolling around and squeezing herself into different positions in the cot. She then cries. I've been trying pick up put down sleep training, so I remain neutral but pick her up till she stops crying then put her down again. This can go on for hours and hours. She might drop off for 10 minutes but then wake again crying. If I cradle her she will fall asleep. A sip of water will also make her fall asleep. But as soon as I put her back in the cot she wakes up and cries. She obviously wants comfort and has separation anxiety but what can I do?

The situation is not helped by the fact she's still in our room. Due to husband wfh there's no other space.

Does anyone have any advice at all please, if you've been through this?

Also yes she does similar re naps. She has always been a short napper - has 30-45 mins in the morning and the same at lunch. Lunchtime sometimes stops at 30 mins on the dot which isn't great, or 1hr if we are lucky.

And bath time is 7pm followed by bed, on the advice of health visitor. She wakes at 7am. 3 meals a day plus a snack for the pp who asked.

It sounds like you have it all in place. It’s odd she wakes again so soon at night when she manages to settle and stay asleep in the day.

My recommendation would be to put her in her own room one weekend, start settling for naps there and then hand over the next 2-3 nights to DH, if he’s not already doing it with you! I’m not sure how immovable your home office situation is, but your and DC’s sleep is important (in case that needed saying!).

We allowed him/her to cry as long as it wasn’t an escalating cry, iyswim - not rush in to settle but give them a chance to settle themselves. Often I found I’d assume the crying would escalate but in fact it didn’t and baby would sleep again after 5-10 mins (which of course feels very long) - and if he/she did get upset DH would be there with cuddles/sip of water. It only took a weekend but I would have been willing to give it longer, since what I was doing before just wasn’t working - similar to how yours sounds.

Teething teething teething just comfort! Sounds like what’s happening now is just torture for everyone, poor you and poor baby! These are just horrible phases and do pass. They have their whole life to learn independence- right now all they need is you. It’s exhausting and feels like it’s never going to end, like you’re going to make a rod for your own back but I promise it won’t happen.

@AtlasLand sounds like the 8mo regression. It's a killer. It can last for weeks and seems like nothing works. But it will!

What helped us (a not so good sleeper to be kind to him) was:

• white noise
• bedtime routine (religiously the same)
• blackout blinds (dark room)
• distraction for me to make him go to sleep (took hours)
• at night I did wait 6 minutes before I got up to him and was always gentle kind and silent when putting him back down, just blanket, dummy and shhhh and repeat like a broken record.

It will pass (but it is absolutely shattering).

We never sleep trained (I am too weak for that) but there is this angry cry he has when he cannot fall asleep and I just sat by the bed and let him have 5mins of cry, dummy and blanket. If he then went back to babbling standing up and such I took dummy and blanket, he cried, I gave them back.... did this a few times and eventually he did fall asleep just with dummy and blanket.

That being said he never wanted milk, tea, water at night (or I never offered even) so that helped.