Help! My 8 month wont sleep!!!

[natie26]

Hi I have an 8 (almost 9) month old baby boy who is my first. He has slept through the night since he was 8 weeks with no dream feeds and over the last 2 weeks he will not sleep AT ALL!! He is only having a half hour nap in the morn and also in the afternoon as he just wont go any longer. He goes to bed about half 6 with his last feed and used to sleep straight through until 6.30 - 7am the next morning.

He is now waking every hour on the hour and i just do not know what to do! He was wide awake from 2.30am this morning chatting and wanting to play. I gave in and did a bottle which he hasnt had since he was a couple of months old and do not want to get in the habbit of this again. I give him his dummy, which he only has for sleep times, and he is just not going to sleep. There is a slight winge and a couple of time a few tears.

I have been thinking it must be teething as he still doesnt have any, but there is no sign on the gums whatsoever!

Please help :(

so long as you don't think he's unwell read Richard Ferber's book. info here. And follow his advice... it might be hard to stomach but it works for an awful lot of people.

It'll be the 8/9 month sleep regression. It's hideous, but it's really common and it does pass on its own. There's good information on it here, here and here.

Sleep training (whether controlled crying or more gentle methods) is very likely to fail during a sleep regression period. Babies' brains are working overtime on a huge lot of mental development which means they simply can't sleep, no matter what you do (or don't do).

The bad news is that it may last a bit longer. The good news is that babies who were good sleepers before usually go back to being good sleepers again once the developmental spurt is past.

My DS had a spell of only napping for 2 x 30 mins in the day instead of 40 mins + 2 hours at this age. He went back to normal again after a week or two without me doing anything different.

I find that when DS is up and wanting to play in the night he won't get drowsy for 1.5 hours after waking. So once I've fed him (he does normally still have 1/2 night feeds) I ignore him if he's not upset (or cuddle/rock him if he is) and then try to get him back to sleep after 1.5 hours - trying before then is a waste of time.

He's not a great sleeper in general, but he does this night-time wakefulness a lot more during developmental spurts, and then it stops again.

HTH