8 month old VERY frequent wake ups at night

[Kstar321]

Hello everyone.

I am having some issues with my ds sleep. He’s 8MO, EBF, doesn’t take a bottle or dummy (refuses). His sleep has never been perfect, but his pattern at the moment has me at my wits end. He feeds to sleep, and goes down about 7pm in his cot in his own room. Then wakes 30/40 mins later, consistently, until we give in around 10.30/11pm and resort to bedsharing. It’s not an ideal situation and something we’ve only resorted to recently-ish, but it at least allows me some sleep. Has anyone else experienced anything similar and have any words of wisdom? I’m not one for CIO methods really. I’m not looking for him to completely sleep through but even some 2-3 hour stints would be amazing!! I should also say he’s not a keen napper either, but the amount of day time sleep doesn’t seem to affect his night time sleep.

I went from bed sharing to putting our little boy in his own room around 7 months and he was waking up on average 15 times a night it was exhausting but we got a decent bedtime routine, made sure he didn’t nap past 4pm and eventually he went longer between wake ups- he only has 2 30min naps a day too which is very unhelpful for getting jobs done and I wish he’d nap a bit longer in the morning.
He still wakes up a minimum of 4 times a night and sometimes he reverts back to 10+ wake ups. He’s bottle fed too and still wants a couple of feeds in the night. Like you I sometimes resort back to bed sharing in the early hours if I know we have plans the next day and need some sleep to function.

We also found that only lifting him up out of his cot for his bottle worked and if he just needed resettling to keep him in his cot. We also use a white noise teddy with a heartbeat on helps him and a dim pink light. Trial and error with things has really helped then when you think you’ve got it spot on they go and get a cold or some other illness 😂 . I just keep telling myself it’s not forever even though the nights are long.

8 months is a separation anxiety peak. It will pass on its own.

You say you aren’t one for CIO, but I think it might be worth doing some research into it. When most people hear “CIO” they assume “extinction”, ie close the door and don’t go back in (unless you think the baby is unwell or needs a change). But there are all sorts of other approaches.

We used the “sleep ladder” approach when our first two kids were 4 months old and went from 6 wakings per night to 2. Basically, when they woke up at night we would leave 5 minutes between every intervention, and the interventions were: first, try shhhh’ing from the door. Then after 5 min, try patting. Then after 5 min, pick up and rock. Then after 5 min, feed. When they realized they weren’t going to be fed to sleep each time, they stopped waking up so frequently after just 2 nights. Obviously there was crying involved, but the babies knew we were there and looking after them, so they were crying because they were annoyed not because they were actually distressed.

With DS3 (5 months) we went old-school and just sleep trained using Ferber. Again, we never left him to cry alone for long periods. It was a total non-event, and he’s now sleeping 7:30pm-6:45am with either one feed or none at all. It’s amazing!

I’m not saying this to try to shove extreme CIO methods down your throat, but only to show that there’s a range of options to help your baby learn to sleep and to preserve your sanity. And the options don’t need to be scary or upsetting. :-)

It will pass, it’s all normal

Thank you everyone. I like the ladder method you’ve outlined and think I’d be prepared to give that a try…we did try a slight variation of this a few months back but weren’t that consistent with it.