9mo sleep carnage - any advice?

[DreamsOfWaves]

Greetings from a fellow shattered mum desperately seeking some advice! So, i have a wee 9mo DS who is not sleeping well at all. I posted a thread during the 4 month sleep regression asking for some advice then...things improved a lot around 6m when he stopped feeding to sleep and took a dummy instead. He was sleeping 7pm-3am, waking for a feed then back down til 6am; awesome. At 7.5m, however, things started deteriorating. He was doing shorter and shorter stretches, waking for dummy repeatedly. Now i think about it, this happened at the time of transitioning from 3 to 2 naps. This then deteriorated to waking hourly until now with the current situation - he is HYSTERICAL at bed time. Inconsolable crying, seems almost panicked. And then waking at around 3am in the same state. I had to take him out in the car yesterday evening to get him to sleep as he was in such a state. No matter what his sleep has been doing so far, he has always been easy to put down at the start of the night so i don't know what's happened over the last few days. I'm petrified of making things worse so really just looking to see if anyone has any ideas. I'm going back to work soon so I'm worried this is going to affect DS' sleep even more, poor wee man.

Just fyi, he is a big boy and eats like an absolute trooper. He gets 3 square meals - loads of dairy and protein, carbs and veg. He has a BF first thing in morning, mid morning, mid afternoon, bed time and then one during the night. The boy is not hungry! His naps are at 9am and 1:30pm, each lasting between 1.5 and 2 hrs. He is normally happy going down for naps. Good bedtime routine of bath, jammies, story, bed in grobag with dummy and some songs til he falls asleep (sometimes with white noise if more unsettled). Now not working - dummy gets launched out the cot and white noise has no impact! Bouncing/rocking has never worked, he has long ago stopped feeding to sleep and he does not like co-sleeping...he just slaps both of our faces and screams. Last night at 4:30am, i managed to get him to settle back down by distracting him with tv and his toys for a bit (stopped the screaming) then took the sleepyhead into the living room and lay down beside him on the floor with white noise stroking his wee head. He just needed distracted out of the hysteria for a bit before he could relax. But what is causing the hysteria??

Also relevant- he is learning to crawl and has now mastered commando, just needs to get up on his knees. He's not in pain, he's had calpol. I also know he's not teething...that's a whole different level of hell.

Any advice to help this little guy sleep a bit better and to not make things worse??

My nearly 8 month old has recently transitioned to 2 naps (past 2 days!) and my problem is the early wake up. His nap times are same as yours and capped at 3 hours (cut off 3pm). He is waking around 540am, after going to bed at 7pm and feeding at least once in the night. I wondered whether the EMW was due to nap transition or whether this is his natural wake up time. I posted on another forum and was told 3 hours was too much daytime sleep! I thought this was about right and a fairly good routine. I was told they should have a short nap of 30 mins at 9/930, then a long 2 hour lunchtime nap starting at 1230pm. Not sure how my DS would take to this. Could your DS be having too much daytime sleep?

Wow, that's interesting! EMW have also been a problem for us (up until 3 days ago when EVERYTHING became a problem!). When he wakes up at 5am, I've gone through and switched on the white noise on my phone and he generally drifts off again for another sleep cycle or two. Have you tried this? If not, may be worth a shot? I'd always assumed not enough sleep was a problem as opposed to too much! If I'm honest, the nights he is even more unsettled are the days his naps have been shorter. Also, he would be on his knees by bed time if he woke up from last nap any earlier than 2:30! Thank you for replying though, i guess anything is worth a shot eh. The screaming during the night almost seems like a separate issue though, it's like he's frightened.

I already use white noise all night and for every nap so not sure what else to do other than either ride it out or massively change the routine which I am loathe to do as he is so contented!

Oh no, that is rough, i hope you get some lie-ins soon!!

Jasquers - I think your issue is doing the 3 to 2 nap transition too suddenly. It shouldn't be a cliff-edge change, more gradual than that.

Jasquers - yours could be the same is due. Did you just stop giving the third nap one day, and that was it? That sudden change can be the cause of an over tired cycle that just gets worse and worse.

I agree it's unlikely to be hunger related.

Odd assumption from the other forum that X amount of sleep (any specific amount) is too much without any consideration being given to nights sleep. With such fractured sleep at night, baby needs to catch up with missed sleep somewhere otherwise just gets perpetually more over tired.

Aside from the fact that your naps are fine anyway for a baby sleeping 10-12h at night. If you have a baby getting significantly fractured nights sleep and/or much less sleep over night, simple common sense should be telling you baby will be more tired the following day and need extra sleep, not less sleep.

I would suggest baby being hysterical at sleep times, then waking very frequently is all due to over tiredness cycles. Bring over tired means extra help is needed to get to sleep - more than is normally needed.

Good sleep hygiene would be for baby to go to sleep in the cot, so try to keep that where possible. Dumny is great for "normal" sleep times, but it's not enough when over tired and exhausted. So you need sometsomething you can do that works to get baby to sleep in the cot.

I am not suggesting sleep training, not at this point, because sleep training means making sleep harder for baby while they learn. And right now, sleep is already too hard for baby and needs to be made easier until no longer over tired.

The most effective in-cot settling I can suggest (aside from a dummy) is a sidecar cot. This means one side removed off the cot and wedged up to your bed. And cuddles through the upset and crying. Commitment to sleep time and just cuddle close, dummy in repeatedly, cuddles to reduce baby's movements. Just keep baby in the cot, with the dummy, being cuddled without too much faff and stay there resolutely until baby is into a deep sleep (so say there 20m or so after falling asleep).

Repeat at any wake up. Always in cot, cuddle to hold still. Cuddle for reassurance. Stay until fully asleep.

I copied Jasquers twice. The second was supposed to be DreamsOfWaves

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, fate, I really appreciate it. Over-tiredness really makes sense. I'm just going to have to really focus on sleep for the next few days. DS seems to be totally associating his bedroom with negative things now because he's started crying as soon as he's taken through, which has never happened before. It's awful to see him so upset, fingers crossed he can catch up on his sleep soon.

Sorry, i should have said his naps started to gradually lengthen (sporadically) and as this happened, he point-blank refused to have any kind of nap at 4ish when he normally would have before. He even stayed awake in buggy/car, which had been a fail-safe previously. So, he did the 2 nap thing rather than us. He actually went from having about 4 naps a day (because they were so short) to 2 so it has been a bit of a cliff edge, however untentionally. The Over-tiredness makes sense now eh???