Solidarity thread for the 9 month sleep regression

[FebMama]

It's well and truly hell on earth. Anyone else going through it right now?

I'll take that as a no?! 😂 lucky sods!

@FebMama 100% me. I was just about to start a thread on this myself when I saw yours. My DS is 9 months (almost 10 months but he was a month early) and I am well and truly losing the will to live. I was in tears with it before.

He has never been the best sleeper, waking once or twice but this is something else. He’ll either wake at around 1am and be wide awake, point blank REFUSING to go back to sleep until around 5am, or he is up at 4am for the day. Even when he is up at 4am, he usually still wakes around 12/1 to be resettled. On top of that, his day time sleep is out of the window. His day time sleep used to be pretty good, he’d have around 45 mins 2/3 hours after waking then a longer 2 hour nap in the afternoon, but it has turned into a total battle. He is refusing the morning nap altogether, so by the time it gets to around 11am he is EXHAUSTED. So he’ll go down and have a couple of hours but it means then he’s awake from around 1am until bedtime, and he is so grumpy, whinging and moaning. So not only am I a walking zombie myself, I am also having to contend with him being so tired and in such a bad
mood himself. I have an older DS and I feel terrible I have barely said a word to him this half term! It’s all I can do to keep going.

I just don’t know what to do. I think we’re caught in an overtired cycle but when he is completely refusing sleep how do you fix it? I don’t know how much more I can take. I am anxious going to bed myself because I am just anticipating him waking up any moment.

You have my full sympathy!

@Tisfortired that sounds so tough. Sorry to hear you are having such a hard time with it! How long has it been going on for you?

My LO has been doing hourly wake ups from bedtime until I eventually give in and let him sleep with me. I'm really worried I'm creating bad habits. It's been happening since Sunday, before this, we were having nights of 7pm - 7am (but not for long) where he would have zero wake ups. But before that, his sleep was never great and he would often wake for comfort.

Daytime naps for us are rubbish too. I really have to work hard on resettling him for the afternoon. For example today he went down at 1pm, woke up at 1.50pm. I was rocking him for 20 minutes and he fell back to sleep again. As soon as I put him down, he woke up and just grinned at me! So that was that, I just got him up then. He then went down to bed for 7.10pm. I'm expecting a wake up very soon 😔

I currently have a makeshift bed set up on his floor because I can't keep doing the constant getting up and walking to his room every hour. I really dread the nights at the moment. Really hope it doesn't last too long 🤞🏽

I see your comment about not wanting them to be in your bed because of ‘bad habits’ and I just wanted to say it is absolutely not! If you look at infant sleeping in the rest of the world it is only us and more so America that really seem to push independent sleeping. I’m not here to start on a sleep training debate, but if co sleeping helps you and LO get some good restorative sleep, and it works for your family, how is that a bad habit 😊? I absolutely get the pressures from society making you feel like co sleeping is something to be ashamed of but how can somethings so natural and widely done be so wrong!

I follow a few Instagram pages that really support people who don’t want to sleep train and use co sleeping as a method for parts of the night - hey sleepy baby, happy co sleeper etc. They are great pages with practical gentle sleep tips. i was getting myself stressed and worked up with very little sleep endlessly trying to re settle LO in their cot every night. Now I try start the night off in there hoping it’ll get longer and longer stretches. Some nights we last to 9pm (teething and illness) some it’s 1am, but I enjoy every sleepy cuddle I get for now, no one has 15 year old still wanting to sleep on their bed!

@Takemetothelakes45 thank you for your reply! I absolutely see where you are coming from. I actually co-slept with my eldest for 11 months and with the youngest until 7 months when he went into his own room. I guess for me, I meant I don't want to create bad habits in the sense that I've started to get him sleeping independently for a few weeks and didn't want to go backwards!

We have had some success and 2-3 weeks of 12 hours a night so I know he can do it. I just worry that bringing him in with me he will forget how to sleep independently again and I'll be back to square one ☹️