9mo always tired, always grumpy, but struggles sleeping - feeling so worn down.

[lavenderlilaclily]

Hoping for some help/advice with my 9mo. He's never been a great sleeper. But he has had phases of being okay as such - around 5, 6, 7 months he was a very happy baby, napped an appropriate amount for his age, and his night sleep wasn't excellent but wasn't awful (about 2 wake ups a night).

Since about 7.5 months everything has just gotten worse and worse. At first I put it down to teething as he had 4 teeth come through at the top but they're through now and he's still a nightmare.
He is almost ALWAYS tired. Constantly grumpy and whining, rubbing his eyes and face, very rarely content which is sad to see and makes me feel like a horrible parent. When he wakes up in the morning or from a nap there's about a 30 min window where he's okay-ish and then he's back to being grumpy. He won't chill out when he's tired either - he won't ever cuddle or anything like this, he just gets mad and scratches and writhes and pulls at me, which makes me feel like he fundamentally dislikes me.

I try to give him every opportunity to sleep but he just struggles with it. He needs LOADS of support to get to sleep, and when he does fall asleep it often doesn't last long. He can nap for up to an hour, but more often than not it's less, and very very rarely more. At night he wakes up multiple times. He generally needs to be rocked to sleep for a long time which is increasingly difficult as he is heavy. He used to feed to sleep but this no longer works, except sometimes in the middle of the night if he's very sleepy.

I'm starting to wonder if something is physically wrong with him - like an ENT problem - though I would imagine this would have showed up sooner? He HAS previously slept stretches of 5,6 hours so it's not that he's never been capable of sleep.

I have considered some sort of sleep training but I need my partner's support in this as I can't do it alone (we share bedtime/nighttime) and he is firmly against sleep training. I've got him to agree to a "gentle approach" where we slowly withdraw support but neither of us - I would say particularly my partner - are consistent enough.

I am exhausted, my baby is exhausted and so grumpy all of the time, and it's hard. I'm meant to be returning to work next week part time (remotely) and I've got no idea how to do this when my baby is constantly furious and needing attention. I just feel like a failure, especially when I see other people's happy, cuddly babies.

Firstly, your baby doesn't dislike you.

Secondly, when you return to work baby will still need to be in childcare even if you're working from home. So it won't be for you to deal with (and those working in childcare have lots of experience of this).

Now the issue...

I very much doubt there is something physically wrong. You've just never taught baby to sleep independently and so baby cannot sleep without you. You additionally don't seem to want to make the effort necessary to teach independent sleep. That's not a judgement, just a statement of what's happening.

So, the most sensible way to maximise sleep is to acknowledge baby needs you to sleep and lean into that - which means baby sleeping in your bee with you, one of you going to bed with baby.

There's no magic wand to make and attachments parented baby sleeping independently easily. You will be wasting time and energy searching for this magic wand. You just, as a couple, need to pick a side.

If he's previously slept well I imagine it's the eight month sleep regression. It's a phase and it will pass xx