8 month old awake for hours at a time each night

[Leza1]

I am so sleep deprived I don’t know where to turn. My DS has been waking every night for hours at a time (anywhere from 2-4 HOURS) every night for the past few months. Has anybody else experienced this? Please tell me things get easier!

Is he teething maybe?

Is he undertired? Sleep a lot during the day?

My first did this, he did grow out of it but it took awhile.
If you can go to bed really early when he does at least you’ll get enough sleep even if it’s in two chunks medieval style.

8 month sleep regression. Hellish. It passed eventually. I drank a lot of coffee.

mine did this for a while. I bf to sleep so we went downstairs, played for an hour, then bf back to sleep. Lasted a few weeks. Occasionally got a nap in the day.

My first did this. It went on for 6 months and was a real low point for me. The sleep deprivation had me despairing. And we had to keep our hand on him. In hindsight, I should have done the "glove filled with porridge oats" trick and left that on him but we felt wierd about it at the time. Like we'd be taking the mick? We were dumb PFB parents back then, I wouldn't hesitate now.

There's damn all you can do about it. We tried everything. It was a waste of time.

Set up a comfy chair with a blanket and your phone and wait it out. It will pass, it's a phase. It's a particularly awful one though.

DD is awake sometimes for 1-2 hours and has always had periods of this (2yo now). She isn’t upset so we leave her too it (she would quite happily play in her crib for hours every day). It doesn’t make her go back to sleep if we go in, so we don’t. It does seem to help if we tighten up her sleep windows though- left to her own schedule she’ll go to bed at 7, wake up for a couple hours at some point and then sleep in until 9. If we wake her up consistently at 7 she sleeps without waking. I realize you may have a different situation if your kiddo is upset but tightening the sleep windows may help-it was a technique my sleep dr taught me to help with insomnia, you can just spend too much time in bed and then you struggle to sleep through.

Thanks so much for all of your replies.

@Happyhappyday - that sounds exactly like my DS!! He loves a lie in because he’s been partying in the night and is more than happy to be left. I just can’t sleep knowing he’s awake! I’ll try getting him up consistently in the mornings. Thank you!!

My DH can’t go back to sleep and ignore her but I put in earplugs, at some point I just need to sleep! We ended up sticking a monitor outside her room on very low volume so we can hear her if upset but not if just chatting.

We had around 5 months of this. Exhaustion resulted in unintentional CIO. Best thing ever.

17mo DS does this when he's in a particular developmental leap...I'm currently up with him watching all of Amazon prime. We've had about 4 new words over the weekend though so I figure there's just too much going on in his head.

Was the same when he was younger, if I remember rightly it was around then he started standing in his cot/crawling and was too exciting to sleep!

I find we go through phases where he does this for 2-3 nights and then he's ok again for anyway from weeks to months...

This too will pass...this too will pass...this too will pass...