9/10 month sleep regression, help!!

[BeckyBoo16]

Hi just need some advice please, I’m at the end of the rope with this.

My LO is 9 almost 10 months old, he’s never really been a good sleeper and when he was 7 months we did the Ferber method and it worked really well for us (I know it’s not very popular on mumsnet) he was falling asleep on his own most nights aside from illnesses and teething and aside from waking for his night bottle he was sleeping through.
But the past few weeks have been awful, we’ve moved him into his own room and ended up going back to shush and pat as he didn’t settle well the first few nights however we can’t seem to go back to just leaving him to fall asleep on his own. He now pulls himself up and stands there and just screams and it’s the worst scream, it’s so loud and sounds like it hurts his throat when he keeps doing it and is almost sick. He gets so worked up but will also be awake for 2-3 hours in the night wanting to play. Refusing bottles so he’s not waking for hunger. The room is pitch black no lights so it’s not that waking him.

Is this a sleep regression? I never know as he’s always been terrible with sleep, we co slept from 4-7 months but once he started rolling and crawling I didn’t feel safe so we did Ferber and thought we cracked it but now this!

Should I go back to starting Ferber again and persevering with it this time? I go back to work in 6 weeks and I really don’t want to be awake all night then going to work. Any advice appreciated x

6 weeks is a really long time in baby development and he'll be over 11 months by then don't panic. You're just getting normal separation anxiety. I predict the nights will improve by 10 - 11 months and then get worse again when he starts nursery as he'll be unsettled from that. Then when he's used to nursery it will calm down again.

Personally in the meantime I'd sleep in his room on a mattress. He probably just needs to see you there when he wakes up. This 8-10 months regression is a killer.

If it makes you feel better I've not experienced any others since then and my ds is 2 and a quarter, and I haven't done any sleep training. All we've had since then is nap drops and bedtime battles if he naps too much. It really is just a phase I promise.

My LO will be 11 months next week and I think we’re coming to the tail end of the sleep regression! We’ve been suffering for weeks now but put it down to various bugs and viruses. It was only when he was better again and still not sleeping we caught onto the sleep regression.

Pre sleep regression we’ve always been able to put our boy down awake and he would settle himself to sleep. I made sure to do this from 8 weeks to avoid the dreaded 4 month sleep regression as much as possible. But with this regression we couldn’t do that anymore as separation anxiety kicked in. He would just scream and cry so hard, standing in the cot trying to see us etc. We would try settling in the cot by putting a hand on his chest, shhhing, patting etc but he wasn’t having it. In the end we brought him into our guest bedroom and settled him to sleep on the bed there and would transfer him to the cot once asleep. Most of the time he didn’t need us to do anything to help him, we would lay him on the bed, he would get comfy and then fall immediately to sleep!

However he would wake up within 30-45 minutes for a resettle. Then again around dream feed time, midnight and anytime around 3-5 in the morning. When this happened we would bring him in with us to co slept (as we were extremely exhausted!) or lay him on the bed in the other room to sleep - we wouldn’t leave him alone btw, one of us was always with him.

My biggest concern during this period of time was that we were setting up some new habits that we wouldn’t be able to consistently follow through with, like the co sleeping. But touch wood, this past week he’s been sleeping in his cot all night. We’re now hopefully just getting away with one dream feed too. We also realised that he needed a later bed time so he now goes down between 7.30-8. We make sure his last nap finishes at 3.30 so he has a nice long wake window to build up lots of sleep pressure before bed. We’re still struggling with the actual getting to sleep part so we’re still doing that on the bed. But it’s so much better than it was and there is light at the end of the tunnel! I’ve been told the next regression isn’t until 18 months so I’m going to make the most of sleep whilst I can. Fingers crossed this doesn’t last too much longer for you. It will get better!