8 month sleep regression - what did you do

[EmmaInParis]

I think my DD is entering it...

After some gradual retreat sleep training at 6 months she went from waking pretty much hourly (since birth ) to typically only waking once around 4/5am for a feed.

The last week she’s suddenly started waking at all hours of night again and being wide awake for an hour at 4am. Last night she went to sleep at 7.30 and woke at 9.30, 12.30, 3.30 and now up for the day at 5.20 .

She’s taken to solids really well and eating plenty, no issues with weight gain or milk intake (she’s jumped up a centile if anything). No teeth yet. Had a cold a couple of weeks ago but that didn’t seem to impact her too much.

Naps are hit and miss and she’s now only fitting in two a day because she won’t go down much earlier than 3 hours between wakings. Vary in length from 1hr 20mins to 50 mins. Sometimes half an hour in which case I try to squeeze in more. She absolutely will not take her 3rd nap anymore otherwise though, even my trusty weapon of driving her around in the car for an hour doesn’t do it anymore.

Is it just a phase? We’ve weaned off night feeds except the 4am one and I don’t want to backslide, but not sure how else to cope or get her back to sleep so many times a night. She was previously settling herself back off if she woke. We’re now shushing like loons.

Heeeeelp

And co sleeping makes no difference before anyone advises that... she doesn’t sleep any better in with me and my set up isn’t safe enough for it / just don’t want to

Is she hungry? Due to growth spurt or similar? I offered a bottle to DD1 at every night wake until she slept through, as the quickest way of getting her back down. I don’t mind getting up to feed, I do mind spending hours resettling!

I just don’t know... I fed her twice during the night last night but she was waking much more frequently than she usually feeds and she had eaten plenty in the daytime. Who knows, argh. I’m reluctant to go back to feeding back to sleep at every wake as once we weaned off doing that (except for the 4am wake) sleep improved exponentially. But will bear in mind. It’s always been very hard to tell with her when she’s genuinely hungry, she doesn’t show many cues at all anymore. she’ll always accept if offered but will often not be interested after a minute or so. She guzzles her 4am feed now but every other feed I had previously offered at night was not a “proper” feeding

Its awful, and IMO doesn't get better unless you actively try to improve things.

We ended up doing controlled crying. We had tried literally everything else. It gets a really hard time on here but I think it absolutely has its place in helping them learn to self soothe. It took 3 nights and was one of the best things we have ever done.

This is perfectly normal. Look up Lyndsey Hookway on Instagram.

Sounds like your baby is sleeping some decent stretches at night, you're lucky.

We did controlled crying too. It didn't take long for us thank god, 2 nights. Turned our lives around. Baby is much happier now too.

I will say though, If he cries now I do go in. But it's very rare

I think we hit all the growth spurt sleep regressions going. We tried Everything and I mean everything. You have to go with the flow. They say try not to make sleep habits (that's where we went very wrong ) with rocking to sleep feeding to sleep. But you do anything for sleep .Lo now two and a half only just really sleeping well. It does get better.