wide awake for an hour at 3am!

[Murl]

My 8 month old daughter has started waking at around 3am and is wide awake - chatting, standing up, crawling around in her cot! she is still tired but seems too wired to sleep. Although she is happy moving around, if I leave her she cries. The only way I have been able to get her back to sleep without too much upset is to cuddle her until she is sleepy again. But this can take up to an hour!

Is this common? Any advice on how to handle it without encouraging it to become a habit for too long?

She is not a great sleeper. Goes to bed at 6.30pm and then wakes usually about three times and then up at about 7am. She still has one bottle in the night. Apart from this recent wide awake episode she is usually easily settled when she wakes.

have got some great advice on here on other topics and hoping mumsnetters can help again! x

oh, and she started crawling 2 weeks ago and furniture walking - if thats relevant!

Oh. It's common, believe me. And it can get worse. It often happens when they've judt done something new or with teething.

Nowt you can do but cuddle and pray.

ha ha thanks Latrucha! cuddles and happy thoughts it is then!

Good luck.

I could have written your post! Last night DD was up between 2 and 4. Awake and squawking! She is too a pretty bad sleeper and since I stopped feeding her at night a week ago we seem to have no way of getting her back to sleep easily.
sigh.
so no solution only sympathy.

DD had a couple of nights when she was up between 1am and 7am. We were beside ourselves. She just wanted to play.

Sounds like it is due to the crawling. If it carries on for longer than a week or two I would try the wake to sleep technique.

Ruddy nightmare, innit? Feel for you.

Sounds like you have a nght time waking routine going.

Don't cuddle her or get her out - maybe just hold her hand? Get some ear plugs and lay silently in the darkness next to her cot. Then sit futher away from her each night. this will take some stamina.

Or let her cry and keep popping in every 5 or 10 mins silently and in darkness. This takes stamina too.

DS did this around 7mo when started crawling/crusing. It settled after a few weeks. However he's now started this crazy business again at nearly 12mo as he is really working on walking unsupported and, weirdly, is obsessed with walking backwards with his walker

I subscribe to the By Any Means Necessary method. Worked before & didn't give him any 'bad' habits. So for the past week he has ended up in bed with me on most nights as at least I can lie down whilst he's babbling/smacking the mattress/playing with his dummy/kicking his legs etc...!

Having been through it before I know it IS a phase and it WILL pass.

Bloody tired tho!!! Good luck.

It's most likely developmental, as suggested - they get very excited when perfecting a new skill. Also, you're heading into 9 month sleep regression territory - Google it if you need to find out more (good info in the Ask Moxie blog). And I expect there's some teething going on too.

It's not really worth sleep-training at this stage because (experts say) there's too much going on in their brains to learn something else (ie, sleeping through).

The main advice seems to be to ride it out, then if you need to, go for some sleep training once the regression's passed.

My DD is doing the same thing and is about the same age as yours - I'll think of you when sitting up with her tonight!!

My 7mo does exactly the same thing - not every night, but about 1 in every 3. It is really hard, especially as it's usually in what I call 'The Witching Hour' somewhere between 3 and 5am.

I don't think the 'wake to sleep' thing (as has been suggested) will help, unless she is doing it at the same time each night... With my DD it varies and can be at any time between those hours, so I am just riding it out and enjoying the good better nights when she has them and trying to forget about the bad.

I do think it's definitely either teething or developmental stuff. Last night she looked like she was desperate to get back to sleep, but just couldn't - it took nearly 2 hours . I know when I have had those nights as an adult, when I have had a lot on my mind, they are hard enough, so it must be equally as bad for our LOs.

Take comfort in the fact you are not alone and remember that it will pass!

Mine (now almost 9 months) did this when we introduced food at 6 months, but for a 3 hour stretch. She would lie about happily babbling in the dark for about 20-30mins at a time but then would get upset. Unfortunately this still kept me up for the entire 3 hours. It was awful.

Being awake for 3 hours was her daytime pattern and it was like she had shifted into doing this at night. What worked (after trying lots of other stuff) was dropping a nap so she was more tired at night. She has 2 naps instead of 3. Still sleeps a fair bit less than the guidelines suggest, but goes to bed an hour earlier now. But she wakes feeds and goes back to sleep. At one point in time I would ahve thought this was something she needed training out of. Now I am just so grateful she goes straight back to sleep.

Yep, sounds just like the 8/9 month regression.

My sympathies - my 9.5 m.o. DS does this every time he hits a developmental spurt (or when overtired, or when he dropped from 3 naps to 2). He's always up for 1.5 hours, almost always starting between 3 and 5am. Now I let him play in the dark until he gets cross as there's no point in trying to get him back to sleep any sooner. It always passes again.

There is a great book explaining it called The Wonder Weeks by two scientists who researched all the developmental spurts up to 13 months.

They say:

"Your baby may start sleeping less well. Most babies do. She may refuse to go to bed, fall asleep less easily, and wake up sooner. Some are especially hard to get to sleep during the day. Others at night. And some stay up longer both during the day and at night."

The developmental spurt causing this happens at about 37 weeks. The fussy period often begins at 34 weeks. It usually lasts 3-6 weeks.

There?s useful information about it here, here and here.