Bedtime shambles

[JimmyJam2019]

Everything had been fine for ages but last night it took 1.5h to put my 9mo to bed and I'm lost as to why.

Daily Routine:
Up at 7
9.30 nap 1.5h
2pm nap 1h
6.30 bedtime

Put her down wide awake at naptime and even if we're running late 10/15 mins still settles on her own fine.

Bedtime is just madness, used to be able to put her down, maybe a little drowsy from her milk feed but still awake, sing a lullaby, stick the white noise on and go. Now she just screams and I have to sing, shush and rock her until she is asleep, it started as just a bit of irritability and now it's 1.5h and my husband taking over after an hour to give me a break. If she takes this long to settle she must be winding herself up more.

I tried a 6pm bedtime and a 7pm bedtime, no real difference.

Sleep advice I have been given is that 2.5-3.5h awake times at this age is appropriate, getting longer after each nap. I've ruled out teething as it's been going on a few weeks now.

What is going wrong?

Was it just one night, or has she carried on doing this @JimmyJam2019?

About 3 weeks, started as irritability now takes over an hour to settle. Seems to be no correlation between bedtime and settle time. Naps in the day always the same.

At naptimes when she settles easily, what happens to get her from fully awake to asleep?

Did you sleep train to achieve this? What was it like previously, when did it change?

Is she sleeping through? If waking, how do you get her back to sleep? Having any night feeds or anything?

At naps I put her down wide awake and she has a Ewan the sheep. I just leave the room. He lasts 20 minutes and I don't need to put on again.
She has slept well from a few weeks old, we have done no sleep training, a little rocking and a lullaby in the newborn days but she just seemed to get it early on.
Once settled always sleeps through and has done from about 10 weeks. We got lucky there. Still sleeps through now, just takes a long time to settle.

I'm assuming baby goes off to sleep at naptime without crying? Does she use a dummy or comforter?

What happens when you put baby in the cot at bedtime?
Is baby lying down herself? (is she physically able to?)
Is she refusing to lie down and keeps standing up?
Is she crying while lying down?

No crying at nap time, perhaps a protest moan for half a minute.
Never had a dummy. There are no toys or comforters in her cot.
When you put her down (she's not mobile, so we place her down and she can't sit or stand up) she just starts crying and it escalates to a scream very quickly. She is only comforted by being picked up. I have tried to persevere with touch and/or singing and not picking her up but doesn't work.

I think this will just come down to being really consistent with in-cot settling at bedtime.

There's a small element of being a victim of your own success here. Throughout the next few years, there are always these little blips where sleep seems to go rubbish all of a sudden. It might have an obvious reason like pain or motor skill developments, or when older things like scared of the dark or nightmares, or illness. Or sometimes there is no rhyme of reason to it.

Many other parents will have previously been through the process of having to teach baby to sleep, so they have a hierarchy of things they (and baby) know to give a bit of extra TLC when it's needed. You're in a situation whereby you have no established settling techniques because you've never needed to develop them.

So while baby may well wail through it, I think it just will come down to developing a settling technique you are happy with. That really wants to be in-cot settling, since this is already established for baby at naptime.

I would make bedtime a tad later, since 4h awake time before bed is ideal. But I doubt that in itself will make much difference. Its more just a bit of boundary pushing at bedtime. Given you have otherwise got such well established sleep habits in place, I'd suggest just being consistent at bedtime with in-cot settling.