9 month old bed time battle

[Hannah4321]

My 9mo has never been a good sleeper and constantly cat napped and woke throughout the night. We did controlled crying at 8 months which worked fairly well and his naps began to lengthen to 1.25-1.5 hours. His naps have now reverted back to 30 mins and when he is put down for bed (about 18:15 after feed, bath, story routine) he screams and cries for 30-60 minutes. At the moment he is getting 10-11 hours night sleep (this has reduced from 11-12) but is starting to wake up earlier and so is becoming less. I am fairly sure it’s due to him being overtired but I don’t know how to fix it. We have tried fixed wake windows, going off tired cues, set nap times and nothing seems to work. Please help. He is suffering not getting enough sleep and it is really distressing for all of us and I don’t want him to be crying himself to sleep every night.

I have zero advice, but wanted to offer support. My nine month old sleeps for half an hour twice a day, and wakes 5+ times a night. She is also taking much longer to get to sleep than she was previously. I've also tried routine, no routine, controlled crying etc. Like you I so worry about sleep deprivation but I've come to the conclusion they there is pretty much nothing I can do about it. I've tried everything, and I'm just hoping it gets better as she gets older.

There is a sleep regression at 8-10 months so that might be causing problems. Have no advice on how to fix it though!

You say he is getting 10-11 hrs night sleep and his naps are 30 mins each, how many 30 min naps is he having a day?

For what it's worth if he's crying for 30-60 mins a night I would probably just try and put him to bed later, around the time he normally goes to sleep. I don't see the point in you all suffering through that if he's not sleeping at that time anyway?

If I remember correctly my DD at 9mo was having about anywhere between 2 and 3 hrs of naps a day (broken up in random chunks so could be a 1hr morning nap followed by 2 30 minute cat naps later in the day etc). And then slept about 11 hours a night.

He has 2 naps usually but occasionally a third in his pushchair if he will go off but that’s getting harder and harder as he just resists. It doesn’t matter what time we put him to bed, the screaming and crying is still the same but at the moment that is the earliest we will do it (he’s already overtired at this point).

We are in a similar boat I fear, but baby is 8 months. Used to nap and sleep pretty well but naps have totally disintegrated, sometimes to just 5 minutes. She's exhausted, we're exhausted. Bedtime sounds similar, at 6.30pm, accompanied with lots of crying however we play it. She's now waking up repeatedly within the first few hours, and I've taken to safely cosleeping just to try and get some rest. I've been googling the 8 month sleep regression and am just horrified by how long it could potentially last. You have my sympathies.

When you say 'when he is put down to bed' I assume that means you put him down awake? Have you tried getting him to sleep and then transferring him (recently)? At your DS's age I still cuddled my DD to sleep every night in front of kids TV and then put her down once she was asleep. Which isn't unusual at that age. She could fall asleep herself in her cot from being around 1 as we did it gradually over many months

How is he eating? Because with our son (also 9 months) we found that he wasn't sleeping well because he needed more food. Now, he's on two 8oz bottles a day, morning and nighttime while he's in bed, and during the day, finger foods and purées for his meals. That was the problem to begin with, and he settled. But then he started having problems again, similar to yours, and he seemed very tired but he wasn't falling asleep until gone 9pm, which was an hour past his bedtime.
My mother in law suggested a routine to stick to, which really helped.
What we do, is; between 4:30 and 5:30 we give him his tea, then he'll go up and have a bath, tesco Fred&Flo does a bedtime bath soap in a purple bottle which I use as bubble bath and it makes him really sleepy, it's amazing! After having a bath (he doesn't have one every day) he'll go into his cot and have his bottle and usually he'll drop off to sleep in no time, he's usually in bed by between 7:00 and 7:30, and then that's that until about 6:30 earliest the next morning. He also has up to 2 naps a day depending how tired he is, and he gets tired by just crawling around playing with toys and pulling himself up on things, basically just keeping himself busy.

Hope this helps somewhat! x

Completely agree with a routine but we cannot get into one as naps are so unpredictable and so is night sleep, which is getting worse 😭 We’re now down to about 8-9 hours. He is breastfed and has 3 good meals a day and is active playing and crawling round the house and gets fresh air if it’s not raining.
Rocking to sleep does not work for us as he takes so long to go off (although is calmer obviously) and wakes as soon as we try to transfer from arms to crib. I’m not keen on letting him fall asleep in front of the TV so wouldn’t try that.
I’m just hoping this is a regression or phase and will pass soon as so tired and run down 😴

I've looked up a few things and found that a lot of 9 month olds are like this. It's often down to sleep regression which lasts 4-6 weeks usually (eek), or down to teething troubles, separation anxiety or reaching developmental milestones. So at his age, he could be starting to want to learn to talk, crawl, pull himself up, walk, use his hands and fingers more, walk around furniture while holding on to it. Of course, this is only relevant if he can't already do these things. But they're the basic milestones for this age I think.
I think, maybe if you're worried, talk to a GP about it, explain what's going on, maybe they'll be able to help you or give you some tips? xx