9 month old has never slept through the night and we are losing will to live

[SLEEPDEPRIVEDHELP]

Hello,

We have a beautiful baby and love him dearly (we're two women FYI and I'm not the birth parent, my partner is still breastfeeding) - but he has never successfully slept through the night in 9 whole months and it feels like no matter what we do, we can't seem to get him to.

We're at breaking point - and it's really affecting our lives and my ability to work.

We used a sleep trainer but to no avail - we've even tried cry it out and he just will not stop crying and go back to sleep. We've tried introducing comforters. Essentially only way he'll kind of sleep through the night in a way that causes least disruption for us is for my partner to breastfeed basically all night.

Here's how a typical night goes:

Bedtime 7 or so: goes to sleep pretty easily, but will start waking and need soothing back to sleep from about 45 minutes in to his sleep and then can expect maybe 2 hours uninterrupted sleep if we're lucky. Then constantly waking from midnight.

During a particularly busy period at work for me, we fell into a pattern of my partner/birth mother breastfeeding him during the night just so we could get some sleep and then I would take over from 6.30am/7am until I needed to leave for work so she could get some unbroken sleep.

We've me doing the nights so now he doesn't expect breastfeeding but still will not stay asleep or go back to sleep with either co-sleeping or extended periods of time soothing him back to sleep.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as we are walking zombies by this point.

Repeat after me - it's normal for infants to wake at night. Stop stressing thinking if you change one thing or another baby will sleep through, it's really unlikely that it'll help. Just accept it for what it is and go to bed earlier so you get more sleep.

My almost 4 year old still rarely sleeps through the night. He was breastfed on demand through the night every hour or so until he was about 18 months then he gradually weaned from the breast. I just used to nap through the day when he did it if someone came to visit I’d leave him with them and nip to bed for an hour. You have to take peoples offers of help.

He still just likes to be near us and we spent months trying to get him to sleep him his own bed but it just didn’t happen. It made us stressed and him worse. So we ended up cosleeping for a while.

He still wakes most nights and comes through to our room and climbs into our bed. He likes to be near us and is a very tactile little boy. I figure he won’t still be doing it when he’s 18

Its completely normal to still be waking at 9 months even though it’s bloody hard!

This baby is 9months old. You don’t give babies cows milk as their main drink under 12months! If you’re going to give advice, go and read the NHS recommendations first. Also stop telling parents to quit breastfeeding when sleep is hard. This drove me absolutely bonkers when I had a poorly sleeping breastfed baby. I was not going to give up breastfeeding because it was important to me so all the ´breastfed babies don’t sleep - it’s your fault because you’re breastfeeding’ bullshit just added to the pressure I was under. Don’t do that to OPs partner.

OP, some parents get lucky and have babies who sleep. Some of us get babies who really struggle to sleep through solid chunks of time. 9months is really young still. It’s not unusual for babies to still need feeding at night at that age, whatever method you use to feed them.The first time my kid slept through the night he was 20 months old. He’s three and it’s still hit and miss whether we get a 3am wake up and he needs one of us to come and give him a cuddle to send him back to sleep again. It does get better. Even if you do nothing your child’s sleep will improve all on it’s own. You can try all the things, and some of them might help, but their is huge variation between how well different babies sleep and a huge part of it is down to your baby’s individual personality and needs. It’s not your fault your baby is a poor sleeper.

Sorry but your expectations are off, my dd1 only slept through at 12 months and dd2 is still a night owl and she's nearly 2. I've heard some horror stories of it being 4 for some kids. Babies wake up at night for so many reasons, teething, comfort, feeding, poor nap schedule, can't self sooth, too hot or sone people are just worse sleepers. You'll get lots of good advice on here it might work or it simply won't. Your baby is still young and yes the sleep thing is so hard but it's nothing abnormal and nothing to worry about. Try sone of the tips you'll get but babies tend to sleep through when they will hood luck x

Sorry to break it to you but my 3 year old hasn't slept through the night.... 🙈

Dd1 didn't start sleeping right through until she was 2.

Dd2 slept through from about 4 weeks much to my surprise & delight.

It's how some babies are.

It won't last forever. Promise.

I feel mean for being yet another person to say this but i think it really is just normal for some kids. As with everything there is a range of normal. My DS started sleeping a bit better around 10 months (like, 3 hour stretches better). Then had a massive regression at 13 months when, at his worst, he was waking every 45 minutes all night and I nearly lost my mind. Then a gradual improvement from there and he finally started sleeping through most night when he was just over 2. Although not last night, obviously

Yes sorry, buckle up. My eldest didn't sleep through until two and the youngest is nearly six and still gets in with us most nights. Both breastfed but stopping made no difference. I went back to work at 6 months both times. It was awful, we tried everything.

You need to manage your expectations and energy around the sleep. Co sleep if you need to. Get exercise and fresh air. Try not to focus on the tiredness/sleep (although this is hard!).

Also ignore baby group parents. There will be some favorable presentations there.

My dd wasn't breastfed and didn't sleep through until she was 2. We tried everything. I'm afraid some children are just like that. It's terrible when you're going through it though.

All mine were BF and none of them slept through the night till at least 18 months (my youngest just started sleeping through at age 2). All slept through by themselves without me doing anything- it just happened naturally (and surprised us everytime).

That might sounds horrendous but it becomes more manageable- they were all only waking only once by the end.

Night weaning didn't work at that young an age for me - I night weaned my first at 1 year and she continued to wake for another 6+ months multiple times 😨 it was much harder to get her to sleep! With baby 2 and 3 I just co slept.

It does get easier. But 9 months to a year was the absolute worst period in my experience.

No, dummies are boob substitutes. If you're ok with a baby getting comfort from a dummy then it's fine to give then the real thing.
Plus at 9 months cutting off food from a baby overnight isn't sensible.

If he's "constantly" waking then rule out medical issues. Apologies if I'm wrong but if you've paid for sleep trainers then I assume there's some spare cash so I'd get tongue tie assessment, which could be from an ENT who can look at tonsils etc, and get iron levels checked.
Are food allergies? Or environmental ones, dust, pets etc, ezcema?

Otherwise if boob back to sleep in bed together gets you the most rest then do it! It's not forever and not abnormal. Look up biologically normal infant sleep and know it won't be forever.

9 months is very, very young. My son didn't consistently sleep through until he was 11. (11 years not months). I was knackered for 11 years.

Just accept it, you have a long, long way to go.

My baby is almost 10 months, formula fed, wakes up atleast 7 times EVERY NIGHT I am fucking exhausted. Have a 3 year old too and about to go back to work. Its bloody difficult I just keep necking coffee and telling myself it won't last forever and ill miss it one day. Handhold its bloody tough. My boy just cries for fun I think (cuddles, milk, dummy, co sleeping etc nothing soothes him) he just appears to hate sleep hahah. I've just removed dairy from his diet incase he has an allergy as he gets little spots too, Sunday night he only woke up 3 times I was excited and thought I'd sussed it, last night awful again 🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️ my boy would also just keep screaming if I did cry it out and I'm not happy to do that anyway x

Oh and my daughter didn't sleep till 3... starting to think its me doing something wrong haha

My son didn't sleep through the night till nearly 6 years old.

Prior to this he woke multiple times a night. Unfortunately like adults some kids / babies don't sleep well

There isn't much you can do about it to be honest. You though do get used to functioning on broken sleep. I always felt tired but I survived it.

My girls didn't sleep through until 11 months, 20 months and 12 months. Its very normal for babies to still wake during the night throughoutthe first year. For DD1 and DD3 we were down to 1-2 wakeups by 9 months though at least.

Some kids are just shit sleepers, DD2 was awful so we coslept and it helped a LOT. I wouldn't try sleep training again

It is entirely normal to wake at night. DD didn’t routinely sleep through until 15 months. We co-slept a lot of the time and I breastfed until 26 months so it wasn’t a barrier to that.

I would never sleep train though, I think it’s wrong and DD sleeps brilliantly now.

Your expectations are unrealistic and sleep deprivation is part of the gig.

So many messages on here trying to win a competition about how many years little sleep them had 😩

OP it’s normal for babies that little to wake in the night however unlike some people on here I don’t think it’s normal for them to wake every hour or so. By 7 months they should be able to get through the majority of the night with maybe 1/2 feeds max so don’t feel bad if you comfort without a feed. My DS was waking hourly a few months ago and it almost broke me so people saying ‘buckle up’ honestly need to pipe down.
I decided to feed DS twice in the night - never before 11 and again around 3 or 4am. Other times he got patted, rocked, back rubs etc first few nights we barely got any sleep but after a few days we got into a lovely new routine where DS only wakes up once or twice a night for a feed PLUS he’s sleeping in later. There are things you can do to maximise sleep!

other things we did: blackout curtains, white noise machine, comforter, being in a good routine with naps (9:30 for an hour and 14:00 for an hour/hour and a half)

DS was exactly the same and it coincided with me returning to work.

We took turns to co sleep, I was still breastfeeding and gradually started to night wean.

Things improved around 12 months where we got down to two wake ups a night. At 16 months, to one wake up and now at 20 months, he’ll often do 8-5/6 and then get into bed with us for a bit.

Hmm, this isn't just a case of not sleeping through, it sounds like there are multiple waking ups. I think you have to look at the whole 24 hours. How much sleep is he getting during the day? How does he go to sleep? Does he go by himself? I do agree with others that it's normal for them to be waking , but in my experience I would only think once or twice in the night, this sounds like it's a lot more!

I agree with this, not sleeping through the night is fairly common - though the research would say over half of babies are sleeping through - hourly waking is not.

We night weaned at 6 months with DS2 and 10 months with DS1 and it was like magic

3 bf babies and they all slept through before bf had ended. They were put down awake early doors though, and rarely fed or cuddled to sleep, just before bedtime. All early risers though.

Have another one? My eldest only slept through reliably after her brother was born when she was 3. Before that she was nightmarish.

The younger slept like a dream from early on!

You have my every sympathy. DC1 slept through from about 7/8 months. DC2 slept in 4 hour chunks from birth but didn’t sleep through until 16 months. DC3 my definite last baby is nearly 1, has slept through the night exactly once and up until last month was regularly up every 90 mins in the night. All mine are bf, I find it easier to deal with night-wakings by just shoving a boob at them. It’s appalling though, I’m a complete zombie. Sorry no answers here I think it’s just now some babies are made - my brother didn’t sleep through until he was 3 and was completely non sleep trainable