8 month old awake for ten hours at a time!

[Thingiebob]

This can't be normal, can it?

My 8 month old's sleep pattern is all over the place. She used to regularly have a nap in the morning, nap in the evening and naturally got sleepy around eight pm so a cuddle and bottle and she would go to bed and sleep reasonably well throughout the night. In the last six weeks since she had a bad cold, everything has changed.
Sometimes she hardly sleeps throughout the day, she won't go to sleep in the evening until she is absolutely exhausted.

Yesterday she awoke at 7.30am in the morning, didn't got to sleep for her nap until 5.30 pm then she slept for 20 mins, woke up and didn't go to sleep until 10.15pm.

This is a nightmare as it means I never get a break or time to do anything (she's a mover, took her first few steps today!) and the whole evening is spent trying to calm her down to get her ready for bed.

She eats at 6ish, then usually has a bath, nappy change, clean clothes then she has a crawl around. She used to get sleepy after a while so bottle and bed but now she just keeps going! We can tell she is tired and have tried various methods to calm her down. At the moment we are putting In the Night Garden on TV which she has just started to watch. At this point she starts yawning and is obviously tired so we try to put her down. She gets very distressed and hyper in her cot, clambering around and rattling the bars, so we try rocking, a bottle, singing etc...

The end result is she finally falls asleep sometimes as late as 10.30pm.

I don't know how to make an 8 month old go to sleep! Any tips?
Help!

Anyone?

Sounds like she is well over tired. Mine would do the same.My problem now is that my very active 8 month DD will go to sleep but wont stay asleep. Wakes 4-10 times a night.
The amount of times is less if she naps well during the day.

I live in fear of her becoming overtired and then she will not sleep and do pretty much the same thing as yours. I can sympathise. Mine will not go to sleep unless I encourage her. She would stay awake all day otherwise.

The best routine to stop this I have found so far is 9am nap for 20 mins to half hour then 12.30pm till 2.30pm and if this goes wrong (which it often does, because she wont stay asleep) nap for 20 mins about 4pm. Bed at 7.15pm

Have a go and see if any improvement. Good luck.

I agree with LittlebearH. She must be massively overtired hence the sleep getting worse.

Get her up at the same time every morning. Try and put her down for her nap not long after she wakes up in the morning. Aim to have her asleep two hours after she wakes so start the routine at least 15 minutes beforehand.

As Little says, aim for a lunch time nap around half 12 after she's eaten and had a bottle (full tummy means more likely to sleep).

I would ditch the TV show. This will overstimulate her - think about if you watch the tv before bed, you need a bit of wind down before you sleep. Babies need even more and watching the tv in her overtired state is probably not helping. Try taking her out for a walk for some fresh air before the bedtime routine, regardless of weather!

Does she nap in the pushchair at all? If you're struggling with day naps, try and get her napping in that just so she catches up on sleep then you can start to try and have a better nap routine at home.

Thank you all for your responses.
When it comes to naps, it's just the same problem. If she is not tired, she won't go to sleep and she often doesn't sleep more than about an hour in total during the day.

Thanks for your advice. It has given me something to think about and I'll have a go at some of your suggestions.