Eight month sleep regression, separation anxiety and teething all at once - we are both exhausted

[TashieWoo]

DD is eight months and one week today, and seems to be going through some sort of sleep regression / separation anxiety stage, I think she has developed object permanence and so knows that I can leave her, which is progress in terms of emotional development but difficult to experience!

Add to that teething, starting nursery and spending more time with my parents, I think she’s quite unsettled at the moment. I went back to work last week and they’re looking after her alongside nursery, luckily I can work from my parents’ house so I can be there. DD is happy there too, will nap in her cot and doesn’t cry for me.

She was going to sleep herself in the cot at bedtime and for naps, we have a solid bedtime routine which ended with me feeding her then passing her to dad and saying goodnight, he would then put her in her cot and shhhh her to sleep. This was after some gentle sleep training at 4.5 months, we never left her to cry but stayed with her to calm her until she fell asleep, she was showing signs of wanting to sleep independently. She will still go down like this for naps but now only wants mummy at bedtime, and I have resorted to BF her to sleep again just because that’s the easiest option. I have tried comforting her in the cot but she won’t have it, it’s like there is an emotional component there now rather than just not knowing how to fall asleep. And because she is going through so much, I want to be able to help her.

She is also up every 1-2 hours in the night now, usually I just feed her quickly and she’s back down, but my sleep is so broken and I’m exhausted. She went into her own room on Christmas Eve and was fine initially, but now I’m sleeping half the night on the sofa in her room, it doesn’t seem to make much difference though.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can get through this and we could all get a bit more sleep? I don’t want to sleep train in anyone other than a gentle way as that wouldn’t be appropriate when she’s experiencing separation anxiety, and I’ve tried co sleeping in the past during the 4 month regression and she didn’t like it! Thanks in advance x

Hiya. We’re in almost the exact same boat! Solidarity and coffee…

Her top 4 teeth are all coming through at the same time. Something that made a huge difference last night was giving Anbesol gel for the first time ever before bed, and every 3 hours during the night if she woke. It really seemed to work! I had 2 hours uninterrupted after bedtime where she didn’t wake up - she just shouted once during sleep cycles and went back to sleep, even though her dummy had fallen out. And the night was so much better - she spent more time in her cot than in our bed for the first time in weeks and weeks. She was more settled overall.

She’s still in her cot in our room and we co-sleep when I’m too tired in the middle of the night so I catch up on sleep that way, to an extent - but it’d be worth grabbing some Anbesol and trying that? It’s a couple of quid behind the counter at Boots.

By comparison, the night before, Bonjela and Calprofen didn’t even touch it - by 9.30 I’d been up and down rocking her back to sleep about 4 times…

Praise be to Anbesol!

Just to add - my DD was also able to drift off in her cot as I sang and stroked her head, and naps were much easier (although all of them were contact naps). Since this recent change, naps are a battle where she’s biting my nip or pulling my hair / lip etc, and bedtime she wants to be rocked, fed etc, the dummy irritates her a lot of the time now too… It’s such a wild change, I’m seeing it as a crazy phase that has to end! Hope you feel better soon.

Gave Ibuprofen before sleep. And if pain is severe wake up after 6-8 hours to give another dose and put back to sleep.

Feed more though put the day, especially 3-4 solid meals so you can be confident they don't need to eat at night.

@moonseas Thank you so much, how old is your DD? Maybe I need to think about top teeth too, she’s just got her second bottom one.

I use anebesol before bed and it made a difference when I used it for a wake up 2 nights ago so I used it every 3 hours last night and I think it definitely helped, maybe I should be applying it to her top gum
too though. And maybe I shouldn’t go to her so quickly, she cries out between sleep cycles but can’t seem to link them anymore, it escalates a bit.

@BabyOnBoard90 thank you - she is eating 3 good meals a day plus porridge after dinner, and I try to BF every 2 hours so I think she’s getting enough, although when I'm working she isn’t so keen on taking the bottle even though she’s always had a bottle. But when I’m at my parents I can BF her a lot of the time.

I do give a full dose of ibuprofen before bed but maybe I need to give her some during the night too, I just don’t want to give her too much, as she has it every day at the moment and that’s also a concern.

I alternate to Paracetamol as it isn't harsh on stomach like ibuprofen too.

With the bottle they'll adjust if persistent. I have about 100 Oz milk frozen and mix fed with formula after 6 months. Conversely DC is no longer interested in breast, which I'm fine with now that she has teethm

She’s nearly 8.5 months @TashieWoo 😊 So glad it helped!

Ok thanks @moonseas , so it could be that DD’s top ones are coming through as well then. I’ll use anebesol on top & bottom later.

I have Lindsay Hookway’s guide for this age and I’m also going to try a later bedtime, as perhaps she simply isn’t tired enough. Our holistic sleep consultant said she definitely isn’t overtired with 3/4 naps a day totalling about 2 hours. A late nap coming home from my mum’s doesn’t help, and although we do have some reconnection play time in the evening, I think more could help.

Thank you @BabyOnBoard90 , I’ll give her some calpol during the night I think. She cried when my mum tried giving her a bottle today, although she did have some.

Have a look at huckleberry website, at this age babies should be transitioning from 3 naps down to 2, with each one last between 1 - 1.5 hours. Might be worth reconsidering the sleep schedule for the day. I totally understand about not wanting to sleep train. We did it and we were incredibly lucky as it took a few minutes on night one (we checked and comforted every 2 minutes) and within a few days she went straight to sleep. But i realise sometimes it takes hours, and i would not have been able to see that through. Our baby was waking 7 times a night before we sleep trained. But it was an incredibly difficult decision to decide to leave our baby to cry at all. The decider for us was that i was on the brink of PND with doctors offering antidepressants, all because of sleep deprivation, so we weighed up the potential long term effects of a depressed and medicated mother versus trying sleep training for a few days and it worked quickly and easily for us. We've had slightly bumpy nights with the transition down to 2 naps as she was sometimes overtired so we got one or two night wakings but at 8 months and 5 days she is definitely coming out of it and sleeping through over 50% of the time again, and on the nights where we get a wake up, it usually takes less than 10 mins to get her back down. Good luck whatever you decide to do.

I'm at the 10 month mark with my second and sleep is still a big challenge. I remember with my first 8-12 ish months being the hardest part sleep wise, I got so stressed with it all. Her sleep started improving around a year, and was sleeping through by 18 months. This time I've just rolled with it and accepted if she needs me she needs me and we co-sleep from 10pm ish.

I'd say watch out for naps a bit - mine has dropped down to one a day in the last couple of weeks and that's made bedtime a whole lot easier. It was a 45 minute battle to get her to bed but now it's 10 mins and done. If I read the sleep guides I'm sure they'd all tell me one nap isn't enough, but my baby doesn't think that so following their lead. The HV also said most would be down to one nap by their first birthday.

Thank you @teaandkittehs and @Potplant19 , this is an older thread that I started in January. The following months were tough with sleep deprivation and near constant illness from nursery that affected us all, but I think we are through to the other side now. DD is nearly 16 months old and she has 1 nap a day of up to 2 hours and about 10 hours of night sleep, and she often sleeps through! We never thought we’d get to this stage and we didn’t really do anything to help, I think sleep is developmental more than anything else.

At the moment I read to DD and give her a bottle in an armchair in her room and she falls asleep on me. She was goIng into her cot and falling asleep independently but I reverted to cuddling to sleep when DD got overexcited and started crawling around the cot!