9 month old waking every 30 mins at night. I’m broken!

[TheCornishGoodLife]

9 months in and I’m completely broken.
I am reaching out in pure desperation - might anyone have any advice at all? I do feel like I’ve tried EVERYTHING (even paid for a sleep consultant) but I am at a total loss now.
Since she was a newborn, my 9 month old just hasn’t slept. I’d spend so many nights until 5am rocking her, singing to her, gently shushing her for hours and hours until she’d crash out in the early hours. Only to wake again soon after. Since she started to develop some sort of circadian rhythm she has consistently woken every 2 hours to feed (ebf). That was hard in itself, but for the last week and a bit, she’s been waking every 30 mins (interestingly she no longer wants to feed on each wake up now) and I am utterly broken.
I honestly do think at this stage, if you can think of it, I’ve tried it, but I’m reaching out in desperation because I just can’t go on like this. I’m going to get seriously ill and, more importantly, I’m just not able to be present in the way I want to be for my baby.
Thank you so much in advance

Goodness just look up the lullaby trust guidelines for safe co sleeping and do that. That’s how babies are designed to sleep - next to their mothers.

A few thoughts.

I’m assuming you’ve had her checked out thoroughly by the doctor?

Have you started her on solid food?

Have you tried a bedtime routine where you put her down awake? Sometimes babies that are put down asleep wake up with a start because they don’t realise where they are.

Have you tried white noise? My DS would always go to sleep if I put the hoover on.

Do you respond to every single cry? Sometimes babies will grizzle a bit and then go back to sleep.

Leaving her to cry for a bit is controversial but when you get desperate like you are, it’s time to try it. Rocking, soothing etc., is all very well but you can’t do it all night.

Have you spoken to your Health Visiting team?

Both of mine had bad sleep regressions and my second was an awful sleeper for 3 years. I ebf both. I am pregnant with number 3 now. I will be cosleeping this time. I can't go through the sleep deprivation again - it's no surprise sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. Will you consider cosleeping? As you say, it affects your ability to be present (and functioning) in the daytime.
As the pp said, look at the lullaby guidelines and cosleep.

Thank you so much for all this ❤️ co sleeping terrifies me because of a story from my friend who is a paramedic who attended a baby that died after being crushed by her mum with co sleeping. It makes me so anxious. It is the only thing I’ve not yet properly tried. I do sometimes end up inadvertently co sleeping because she’ll only feed lying down (she is very fomo and has suffered awful distracted feeding issues and resulting feeding strike - another story 😅), so I bring her into my bed to feed and she always falls asleep in my bed afterwards. So I tend to leave her for a while and doze next to her. She is also next to me in her cot with the side dropped down as a bit of a halfway house. But I am seriously considering it at this stage and should probably with how bad the situation is now.

Interestingly, the issue now isn't her getting to sleep - she tends to be rocked to sleep in 10-15 mins most nights, but it’s staying asleep which is the problem

Have you taken her to the doctor to get her checked out? Waking up every 30 minutes is way beyond what’s normal for a 9 month old, there might be something going on.

I couldn’t co sleep. I tried it but i couldn’t get past his snuffling noises. Plus I worried about smothering him.

She has had a bit of a rough time of it so far which might be contributory - very poorly at birth and 8 days in the NICU with suspected meningitis (they could never properly confirm, but either way she had a life threatening infection). She had to have a lot of antibiotics for a lot of her first few weeks of life. Then horrendous reflux until 6 months which was just awful. Then very severe eczema from 4 months (were under a dermatologist and have finally managed to get this under control).
She weaning onto solids but is quite hit and miss with it - some days she’s keen and others she isn’t at all. But I think that’s fairly normal. And she’s very very sensitive and has suffered a really bad distracted feeding phase since 4 months which caused a feeding strike until I discovered that the only way she’ll feed is lying down on the bed. I adore her, but she’s certainly been through it

She’s not been to the doctor for that specifically, but she has been in the last few days for her eczema review and they’ve checked her over. But I think I might actually book her in now you’ve said this. Just in case there is something else going on - thank you

We had similar, though it was more like hourly - but insisted on feeding every time. Sometimes she'd stay awake for 2-3 hours at a time. It nearly broke me.

No advice, just solidarity really!

Don't rock her.
Put her in her own room in the dark and get the Ferber sleep training book.
And stick to what he recommends - you'll have this sorted in three nights if you do.

I agree, don’t rock her to sleep. Ideally she needs to go into her cot awake.

This.

It sounds tough but in the long run it is the kindest thing for her and for you, I promise. Hang in there and good luck!

Then horrendous reflux until 6 months which was just awful

This stands out as I was going to ask about this before I got to this post. I wouldn’t rule out background reflux given what you have written. Have you tried treating for this?

This sounds so so similar to what happened to us, my eldest wasn’t premature but did have an unidentified virus at ten days old which meant a week in hospital and about a million antibiotics.

I am convinced children whose sleep is that disturbed have digestive problems, so I would ignore all the put her down awake/follow x sleep protocol. This is primarily a medical issue, even if there may not be an obvious fix. In our care, she had CMPA and egg allergy: we clocked it before starting weaning and I cut both out of my diet as she was EBF, but she also had reflux and basically nothing we could do totally eased the digestive discomfort. There were specific baby probiotic drops - bio gaia maybe?- that helped a bit.

ultimately what worked for us was: 1) doing whatever made it bearable. For a long time that was me going to bed at 7pm and my husband sitting up till 1am so I could get a block of sleep. 2) switching to having my husband do the night wakenings for a chunk. I went back to work at 10 months-ish, he took 6 weeks parental leave, and after two or three nights of waking and getting angry at the expressed breast milk her night wakenings dropped massively - she’d still wake, he’d pat and shush her,and she’d go back to sleep. I think at that point she was in a toddler mattress and he was in a double mattress on the floor next to her. I was also incredible anxious about SIDS - the safe seven co sleeping guidance from La leche league helped but tbh I didn’t really relax till baby number two.

the biggest change for us was I think where they start to pull up? Around 9 months? Anyway some developmental stage which was the equivalent of the baby doing crunches, and about two weeks later there was a massive improvement. I just think she had constant low level reflux that was disturbing her just enough to wake her and then that massively reduced.

she grew out of all her allergies, though it took time. Her sleep got better from ten months onwards, though she was still a challenging child to put down and tbh from toddlerhood onwards we basically would go to sleep in our own bed then go into her whenever she woke and sleep beside her in a double mattress on the ground.

she is now 7 and I have to wake her up in the morning. It was an incredibly tough time. There isn’t a magic fix you’re just not finding, but it will get better, and you are loving and comforting your child as best you can. You just need to do whatever you can to get yourself through this next bit and ensure you get the rest you need.

As you put her down asleep after rocking her, every time she stirs she’s expecting that same rocking feeling. She’s old enough now to start learning to settle herself. Be prepared for her to cry, it’s difficult but I think you’re now so sleep deprived it’s time to try something different.

After a few minutes of crying go to her but don’t pick her up, just speak boringly to her. She knows now she’s not been abandoned. Try and stretch out the time you leave her. It sounds harsh but you are desperate to change her routine.

No advice, just solidarity.
8-9 months is the absolute worst period of sleep for babies so you might just have to ride it out.
Look up "rollercoaster of baby sleep" Sarah Ockwell-Smith.

I also had a terrible sleeper. 10+ times a night waking until about 15 months.
He had allergies and eczema so that made things a lot worse, for a lot longer.
We have finally, now he's almost 3, got down to once or twice a night. And even had a few sleeps through.

We coslept so slept relatively well in terms of time, it was just very broken.

You can't carry on like this. You'll lose your mind or crash the car. Or you'll fall asleep while holding her in a chair and hurt either of you.
Follow the safe co sleeping guidelines. Stop rocking her to sleep. At bedtime put her in bed with you, safely, and lie there with her til she falls asleep. Even if she cries. Just lie with her til she sleeps. Do not sit up and rock. You want her to fall asleep exactly how she will fall back to sleep after a night wake. When she wakes, feed her lying down, then both go back to sleep. Rinse and repeat til morning.
She'll get used to falling asleep in bed in time, then you can work on weaning, sleeping alone as you wish if you want.

You are her sleep association, she falls asleep in your arms being rocked but wakes up somewhere else. She needs those same conditions recreated to go back to sleep. You need to change how you put her down to sleep.

With my DS I used to disturb him a little as I put him in his cot so he knew where he was and technically was goint to sleep in his cot on his own. When he woke he knew where he was and everything was still the same so he learnt to go back to sleep.

Also, don't rush in for every wake, give her a couple of minutes to see if she can figure it out for herself first and then go in.

Mine woke hourly until she turned one, then it just stopped and she started sleeping 2/3/4 hour long stretches and within a few months was sleeping through. It was rough, you have my sympathies.

if you want to sleep train as pp above say to, no judgement, everyone has to do what’s best and right for them and their family, but just saying for balance that I felt really pressured into sleep training. People were telling me it was my own fault now and actually I wasn’t being kind to dd by not sleep training her. It didn’t seem right for me and my baby though. I just did what I could to get through it, it won’t be forever. I went to bed early, I tried to do some of her naps with her or at least lie down and rest, and I expressed so dh could take her for the odd wake up and I could get a longer stretch. At the weekend Dh would also get up at 5 with her and let me sleep until she needed another feed from me, sometimes I’d feed her and he’d take her back so I could sleep again.
I was really against cosleeping too, but I kept falling asleep because I was so exhausted so I decided to set us up to at least do it safely since it was happening anyway.
I slept lightly and was still exhausted because I was so scared and paranoid about hurting her, but it was still more restful than what I had before. Good luck

My husband is a paramedic, has been for years. He has story’s that would put you off doing anything with your child, has seen things no-one should have to see. Unfortunately it’s part of the job and you have understand that is so many cases they are one off very very unfortunate cases.
People have mentioned the lullaby trust which is a great resource for safe cosleeping. Health visitors are now currently being trained in same cosleeping an ‘ahealthvisitor’ on Instagram is a great resource who is a health visitor who coslept with her own children. My son was the worlds worst sleeper he was every 1-2 hours until he was 6 months and teeth started coming in and then an hour stretch was a miracle from him until he turned 18 months, got all his teeth and started sleeping through the night. Cosleeping with him was the only way, he’s 4.5 now and has never been in my bed since 18 months.
I also have a 13 month old. She sleeps better but is an absolute cot hater which was a shock cause my son was in a cot until almost 3. She’s wild so my bed isn’t safe for her so I got her a floor bed and that was a game changer. She sleeps part of the night independently and then I usually join her in her bed when she wakes around 2/3. Hoping to phase that out when I stop breastfeeding.
I have worked full time since both were 9 months in a senior role and I have the kids myself most evenings and weekends due to my husbands job so you find ways to work it for you.

We had the same around 8 months - baby waking every 45 mins. It lasted about a month and then she went back to longer stretches. It's really, really hard, but you will get through it.

II was about to comment then read this...a very strong second to this!! Even including the 3 nights. Good luck. Because she's being rocked to sleep when she wakes herself she can't replicate the process so she's stuck.

Sounds like she can't resettle herself in the night as she's reliant on movement - which she can't do herself.

I'd rock her til she's calm and sleepy and then lie her in the cot and pat her. If she gets really upset pick up and rock again til calm but put her down before she falls asleep. Keep repeating until she falls asleep in the cot.
It might take hours the first night but should get quicker and quicker.
Once you are just patting her to sleep in the cot, you can gradually reduce it until you are just putting her down and she falls asleep by herself.

I know someone who co slept. One night she was especially tired. When she woke up in the morning she’d had her head on the baby and had suffocated it.