how do you know when sleep regression phase has ended, and that baby is not continuing to wake out of habit?

[owainsmum]

Like the title says- my DS is 9 months, and for the past 3 weeks or so has been waking and crying a lot at night, and it often takes a long time to settle him (although more and more I give in early and bring him to bed and let him comfort suck to sleep). Before this we had about 4 weeks of him almmost sleeping through, and before that he was always a bad sleeper. So we're at the 8/9 month regression, and he has forgotten how to self settle and needs to be rocked and have his back stroked to fall asleep. He has been like this for 3 weeks now, but I'm wondering how to tell when this regression phase has ended, because presumably he has now got used to being fed, rocked, cuddled, and stroked to sleep, so the extra wakings could turn into just waking out of habit. If he's just waking out of habit then I'll try to not feed him so often so that he might stop waking so much, but I read that you're not supposed to do anything like that during regression phases because babies need the extra comfort.
Anyone have any advice?
Thanks

Dunno, i have been thinking the same question and dd is nearly two... Waiting for somebody to come back with an answer...

please tell me he'll get over this before he's 2!

iim experiencing the same thing at 8.5 mths too and wondering the same thing!

I had the same problem at 6mths - two weeks of terrible nights due to teething, weaning, development leaps...all that I suppose. I decided it had to end when the wakes were very quickly eased. At the beginning, he was taking ages to drop back to sleep and seemed to need to nurse every time he woke. By the second week, the nursings were much less insistent and he dropped back much more quickly - at that point I decided it was becoming a bad habit. I tried rocking with dummy instead of nursing, and though it didn't always work, the message got through in the end anyhow and he stopped waking.
Now I just need to sort out the early morning wakes....

Once you've passed the developmental leaps at 26 weeks, 37 weeks, 46 weeks, 55 weeks, 65 weeks and 76 weeks (from EDD - asjust according to whether they were born early or late).

It was easy for me - DS started sleeping in the pushchair again, and could be resettled by some other way than bf. Neither was true during a regression phase.

There?s more info here, here and here.

Personally I wouldn't worry at 8/9 months because it'll all go to pot in the 11 month regression, so by the time you've 'trained' them out of the 'bad' habits, they'll start them up again. I say this as someone whose DS did continue the frequent waking from 'habit' between the 8/9 month and 11 month regressions.

He started sleeping much better of his own accord after 13 months though. It can happen. :)