Very irritable 8 month old

[xtwilight]

Is it normal for babies to get really irritable and become a bad sleeper around 8 months?
DD is usually a very content baby and sleeps through the night but the last few weeks she has become more difficult to get down at night, is taking shorter naps, waking up around 4am and can't get her to go back down and is generally irritable throughout the day.
I don't know where my happy little girl has gone and I'd love her to come back 😩

Yes normal. Separation anxiety starts around 8/9months and another sleep regression.

Or it could be teething that is disturbing her sleep.

How many naps does she have? If it's hard to get her down at bedtime it might be too short a wake window between last nap and bedtime or too much day sleep. If she's on 3 naps a day still, probably time to drop one.

What does a 'bad sleeper' look like to you? Mine isn't a bad sleeper. My 8m old has 2 naps a day (2-2.5hrs total day sleep) and goes down easily at 630/7pm, wakes around 10, then again around 1, 5 and 7 ish, give or take.

My eldest was a bad sleeper - would wake at every creaky floorboard or boil of the kettle (in another room!!) Also woke every hour until 18months and then started sleeping through around 25m. Bad sleeper.

She has two naps a day and her wake windows are about 3hrs. She goes down for her first nap fine but will only sleep for 30/40mins whereas she normally sleeps for an hour and a bit. Her second nap she is still sleeping for 1hr30min.

I've been extremely lucky with her where she will sleep from 8pm, she has a bottle around 10pm and then will sleep through until 6:30am. Now she is sleeping until around 4am and not going back down. I know waking once is still very good for a baby of her age, however for her specifically it is unusual.

She has had her two top teeth come in the last two weeks but she doesn't appear to be teething anymore, unless she has more that are coming in now straight after these.

@xtwilight sounds like the 8m sleep regression then, ride it out! There definitely is no 'usual' when it comes to infant sleep, it's certainly never linear!

Is she crawling yet? My already terrible sleepers all got even worse when they were building up to crawling/pulling up (& then giddy once they could do it & up practicing )
Having re-read your description of her sleep I'm not sure I should comment - none of mine slept that well until past the age of 2, one was well over 3 😂

Mine also dropped second nap about this age...

As the first poster said. 8m sleep regression and the separation anxiety they get at this stage too. Just roll with it, it's over fairly quickly usually

Thanks for your replies all.
She isn't "properly" crawling yet but she is army crawling and pulling herself up onto her knees etc so maybe it's got something to do with that.
Again I know we are SO very lucky with her sleep and I suppose "bad sleeper" was the wrong description to use - waking earlier than usual would have been more accurate.

Hopefully she'll revert back to her normal soon, it's always hard to get less sleep than you're used to.

(It wasn't a dig about her "bad" sleep I was just genuinely concerned that our experiences were so different that mine was irrelevant to yours 😆
Like all those people with "good" sleepers who used to say "have you tried putting him/her in the car to sleep" when mine just screamed in cars 😁)