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

Just coming back to this thread op to hope you’ve got some irl support. I’m going to add one more thing, is it teething? Maybe try a bit of Calpol before bed as an experiment and see if it helps. But Reading these replies has reminded me how exhausted I was I just wanted to cry. Sleep train, or you’re doing you both harm. No don’t sleep train it’s bad for them. Breastfeed, no breastfeeding is the problem, bottle feed them. Be their comfort, don’t be their comfort too much though. Comfort them to sleep, no don’t comfort them to sleep they need to self soothe. Cosleep, no don’t cosleep and here’s a horror story about a dead baby. Now use your remaining mental space to figure out cutting out dairy, now try dairy free formula, is it tongue tie, is there something wrong with them medically. Etc etc etc. it is DRAINING. No shade to any pp I know everyone’s trying to help, myself included, but I remember getting these responses myself when I asked for support and I just wanted to scream cry with frustration and exhaustion.
you can’t do everything on no sleep, if you have irl support to help you get more sleep or do some of the things you need to do, use it. Outsource what you can. Try to catch up a tiny bit and hopefully it’s something simple like teething which will likely pass in a few days and can be eased with some pain killers.

I know this is a popular idea (my health visitor have me the same advice), but there's no evidence for this whatsoever. Anecdotally, I tried everything - feeding my baby to sleep, holding her to sleep, waiting until she fell asleep in her crib alone and there was no correlation between any of these things and whether she slept through or not. Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn't, but it wasn't due to anything I did. The only thing that made a difference was time (and possibly the end of teething).

Yy to trying a dairy free diet for you for a couple of weeks.

And you might try cranial osteopathy. Ds1 was a restless baby and a bad sleeper, waking every 2 hours till 15 months plus, though he never achieved every 30 minutes. You must be knackered! 2 visits to a cranial osteopath did help him to chill a lot. (After the first treatment he fell asleep with no rocking and slept for his longest ever stretch. He just looked more relaxed too). It isn't cheap but was definitely worth every penny. (Interestingly I took ds2 when he had colic. She gave him a quick check over but said she didn't think he needed treatment, unlike ds1 who had had an assisted delivery. She said she could always tell. Assisted deliveries often left babies coping with headaches and associated discomfort. I just wondered if your little ones meningitis might have also affected her.

HTH

Mine was a horrific sleeper but has got a lot better at 18 months. Co sleeping is the only thing that’s worked for us. I’m a big believer that babies don’t need to be ‘taught’ to sleep and that they all get there eventually. Some just need more reassurance and support than other. A baby needing reassuring in the night and being left to cry in the dark just doesn’t compute with me 🤷‍♀️

Have you read up on safe cosleeping and the safe sleep 7? Obviously there will always be awful stories but I would imagine that those heartbreaking stories posted above weren’t following safe co sleeping.

Some babies don’t need it but some do and we’re mammals after all. You don’t see wild animals leaving their babies on their own to sleep.

I also recommend checking allergies and intolerances. Mine had two allergies and terrible reflux with didn’t help things.

I know this goes against the grain of modern parenting. I was in your position. Midwife said put baby down, when wakes go in abd calmly re-assure, walk out, close the door and turn the TV up. It stopped after a week.

She needs to fall asleep how she’s going to stay asleep. So if you want her to sleep alone in the cot she needs to fall asleep alone in the cot. The rocking is your problem because when she comes into the light sleep phase of her sleep cycle (the full sleep cycle being 45 minutes, and the lighter sleep typically occurs towards the end) she’s noticing the change and fully waking up wondering what the hell happened. And who can blame her, if you fell asleep cuddled up with DH on the sofa then stirred to find yourself alone on in your bed you’d no doubt wake up too wondering how and why, not just roll over and accept it.

If you feel cosleeping isn’t for you then you need to sleep train. Ferber/controlled crying is the quickest and most effective if you can stomach 3 nights of crying. If you can’t then look at more gentle methods like gradual retreat but be prepared that it’ll take longer. And whatever you do stick to it. The fact that say you’ve tried ‘everything’ and it hasn’t worked isn’t remotely surprising. You need to pick one thing and stick to it consistently.

I’d also really try to up solids to ensure hunger isn’t an additional reason for the wakes. 3 meals the day + milk is typical for a 9 month old.

I had this with mine, can you start pumping and trying to give her a bottle. The issue I had was that my DC got into the habit of wanting little but often feeds as a way of soothing back to sleep (their sleep cycle is 30 mins ish around this age so when they wake they can’t soothe themselves without your boob. As I didn’t want to cosleep it basically meant that I was a human dummy with no sleep and reached a point where it was making me ill. At least if you bottle feed your DP can share the load. Can you also try a comforter (I used a small soft duck) that I put in my bra for a couple of days so it smelt like me and I found that DC quickly became attached and it helped him soothe himself.

Look up Taking Cara Babies - people in the US swear by it

I have very little practical advice but dd1 was the same. She woke constantly, sometimes I would look at her and it seemed like she just could not sleep. I was so, so tired. I honestly dont know how I managed anything. At nine months though the co-sleeping risks are very low so that is worth a try. If nothing else has changed during this last week though perhaps she is getting a cold or something? Changes to sleep l is always one of the first signs in mine that they are getting ill (still, at 11 and 9!)

One night, at 17 months she slept through. And did the same every night after that. And dd2 was nothing like it, she slept through from a couple of days old!

I think it's another 'let them cry to sleep' to type method from what I've seen from Americans with babies.

Indigestion medicine after every feed?.chat to Dr. Couldn't lay my second down without it, would result in crying.

If it is reflux, you can pop a book under the feet of the top end of the cot so the head is slightly higher. Don’t make it too high that DC can slip or roll just a small amount. It stops the acid travelling up

This sounds so tough, I've been there and it's so hard. Have you tried calculating your baby's 24 hour sleep need? I used a sleep consultant and they did this and it worked wonders for us.

Is she teething? Some babies are just absolutely horrendous teethers! DS is 16 months and cut his first tooth at 4 months and proceeded to cut a tooth approximately once a fornight with the odd week break here and there. He has just finished cutting his canines (they took months!), and has finally started sleeping through the night this past week! Dreading his 2 year molars which I'm expecting will make an appearance soon...

We did do some gentle sleep training around 4 months - patted him to sleep in the next to me and tapered this off until he could self settle, and this helped us go from waking every 60/90 mins to two hour streches which gradually increased as he got older. Sleep training is not a magic bullet though.

I night weaned at 12 months - had no impact on wakes whatsoever.

We did do some gentle sleep training at this age, the shh-pat method worked well for us. There were some years for a couple of nights but both our DS learnt to self settle.

Co sleep. I did it with both of mine. Game changer. Read up on safe co sleeping eg no pets, no sagging mattresses, don't co sleep if you've been drinking or smoke.