9 month old struggles

[Hydrangea10]

Hi looking for a bit of advice please or those with similar experiences.

I’m absolutely exhausted with my very high energy 9 month old son. He is non-stop from the minute he wakes up, he’s very active and mobile. I’m worried his wake windows are completely out of control as from research, the typical wake window for his age should be around 3-3.5 hours whereas he will easily go for 5.5 hours. At the moment he wakes at 7 - 7.30 and then has ONE nap during the day at around 12 for 1.5 hours and then is all go until 7pm. Unfortunately he also wakes up countless times during the night too.

I’m absolutely shattered, I feel like I have a permanent headache and the only support I have is my husband who works long hours. I try to get out with him every day to play groups and do various activities but he needs a lot of stimulation. I feel like this schedule isn’t all that normal for his age?

I’ll also add he hasn’t got teeth yet so that maybe why he is waking a lot.

Thanks in advance 😔

Your DS sounds very much like mine. He is always on the go. I see videos of babies sitting and playing it even just sitting and think how? Mine is always climbing/crawling/standing etc I just chase him around the house all day and it is exhausting. My husband also works long hours, he leaves before my son wakes up and gets home after he's gone to sleep so I do everything. I completely get why you have a permanent headache.

9 months would be very early to drop to one nap, if it was working then cool but from the sounds of it I'm not sure it is. The ONLY way I can get my son to have two naps is for me to rock him to sleep in his pushchair. If I try his cot it would be one nap because he fights it so much and would spend hours climbing and standing up in his cot. My son is 11 months old this is our schedule;

Wakes at 6:15
1st nap 9:00 for an hour - always in the pushchair reclined with me walking around the house or rocking it back and forth until he falls asleep. If we wakes up after half an hour I rock the pushchair to get him back to sleep again.
2nd nap 2:00 for an hour. This will sometimes be in his cot but also sometimes will also need to be in the pushchair
Bed at 7/7:30

If he doesn't have those naps his sleep is all over the place. He doesn't sleep through still if he does have the two naps but it will be only one wake up instead of.... Many.

Thank you for replying, they do sound similar! 6.15 wake up must be tiring, but sounds like you’ve got a good routine going.

I think you’re right he needs to have two naps again, he’s just gone down with a bit of resistance but hopefully sleep breeds sleep? So they say 😬

Mine is/was the same! I am always so bemused by those posters on social media who have "snuggles in bed" with their <1 year old watching TV, mine would tolerate that for all of 30 seconds! He sat on my knee to watch an episode of teletubbies the other day and I thought he was ill cause he never sits still like that.

I have found that nursery has helped a lot- are you going back to work? It provides so much more stimulation than I can manage myself, and lets him really get his energy out. That in turn has helped sleep (after an awkward period where he wouldn't sleep at nursery at all...). He's also able to burn it off a bit more now that he's starting to walk (though that brings other issues...). Solidarity! I live in hope that once he's able to play "properly" in parks and stuff I'll manage to sit down occasionally!

Oh I know what you mean @whyyy321 I tried to get him to watch some CBeebies this morning in bed so I had a moment to wake up, but no chance!

He is in nursery two half days a week thankfully, but it hasn’t really helped his sleep. Seems as though your little one is enjoying nursery? Swings and roundabouts when it comes to walking I suppose, I do look forward to having a little toddle down the street to tire him out 😅