9 month old awake for hours in the night

[MissingSleep100]

Does anyone have any clues? Our baby has just turned 9 months old and has slept terribly since he was about 3 months. He generally goes down OK now but almost every night we find he wakes and we can’t resettle him for 1-2 hours. He can be fidgety but he does seem to want to sleep (not fighting it or playing) but he just can’t get back into a deep sleep easily. He’s not hungry or cold and the room is black. We try not to intervene too soon but inevitably he’ll cry out for us and we’ll try to settle - he’ll go still and quiet for a bit but then get annoyed and whinge. He gets upset if we withdraw comfort. This goes on and on until eventually he just randomly goes. The only thing that works without fail is bringing him into our bed but it’s really not our ideal solution as sleep quality is still very poor this way. We’ve spent hundreds on various gentle sleep training courses/help now but are we are not willing to do any controlled crying. The lastest attempt came after months of cosleeping and contact naps and we’ve been going with it for a few weeks. We made some progress but now seem to be getting less sleep than ever and are again resorting to bringing him to our bed again (which we had managed to avoid for weeks so it’s a real step back). Through this though we know our routine is good and his daytime sleep is generally the right amount, although daytime naps can also challenging. If you’ve made it this far then you’re a hero and if anyone has ANY ideas then I would be so so grateful to hear them - we’re exhausted!!!

What’s his daytime routine? When does he nap and for how long?

Hi, Generally we try to get him up at 7, sometimes he wakes earlier and sometimes we need to wake him up (so admittedly this can stretch to 7.30 if that’s the case and it’s been a bad night). He has a short 30-45 min nap at around 9.30, and then a (hopefully) longer nap from 1/1.30 until no later than 3 (rarely achieve the whole thing and normally needs a resettle). We did try without the morning nap yesterday and he managed but it made no difference. Depending on how his afternoon nap is bedtime will be between 6.30-7 so he’ll have dinner at 5, bath around 6 then into pjs and books and bottle in his (dimly lit) room. I sing the same song to him as I put his sleeping bag on and say the same phrase to him as I put him in the cot for every sleep. He goes into his cot awake and he needs varying support to drift off - sometimes he can do it mostly alone, sometimes needs some patting/shhing, sometimes a hand on him and more recently popping back down when he sits himself up!

There’s a sleep regression between 8-10 months so this could be it. My 10.5 month old went through something similar at about 8.5 months.

I did think this - although these long resettling periods were the reason for starting cosleeping in the first place so have been going on a longgg time (only stopped by cosleeping!)