9 month old sleep - does it get better?

[Chewbecca22]

I have a 9 month old son and he slept great until about 4 months, then the regression hit and we’ve never really recovered! Just wondering when it gets better as I am exhausted 😴

Our schedule looks like this most days:

5am he wakes, I either bf him to get him back to sleep or he’ll fall asleep himself after a bit of rolling about in the cot

6am - he’s up for the day
6-6.30 - 5oz bottle - sometimes he guzzles it, other times he isn’t interested and it takes ages to get him to have it

7/7.30 - breakfast, either porridge and fruit or some toast and yoghurt

8.30/9 - nap - usually 1.5 hours or I’ll cut it short if we have a class or group to go to

10.30 bottle 5oz

11.30/12 - lunch

1ish - attempt at a bottle.

1.30/2 nap - usually 1-1.5 hours

3.30ish bottle

bedtime is 7ish depending on when he woke, he can go 4 hours before he starts showing signs of tiredness, and often it takes up to an hour to get him down, so we start about 6.30/6.45 after his bath and last bottle and he fights it for agggges.

The schedule isn’t fixed and changes depending on groups and things, eg yesterday he took a 6 min catnap in the car at 1.30 and then wouldn’t fall asleep until 2.45 which threw everything off.

overnight he wakes roughly every 2/3 hours, so by the time he is up at 5, I’ve gotten up at 11/1/3 and I’m just shattered. I feed him back to sleep when he wakes as it’s the quickest/easiest way but I honestly thought he would be sleeping at least longer stretches by now - he can self-settle, he does it for his naps, I just don’t get what’s happening.

when I’ve tried to feed him more during the day he just refuses, he’s not a good eater anyway so he has a few nibbles of the food, and it’s an effort to get him to finish a 5oz bottle.

he was going to bed earlier but he was awake for the day before 5 and that wasn’t happening, but now it’s later and he is still waking then..

It absolutely gets easier. My boy was a poor sleeper from day 1, and he went through stages of even 4 and 5 wake up a night. He's 2 and half now, and we're usually on 0 up to 2 wake ups if he's a bit poorly.

I can't say it looks like you're doing anything wrong/to be improved. Just if you're doing all the wakes because of breastfeeding, do you have a partner who can do the early starts. Even if it's just a weekend? Rest as much as you can in the day too. Even 20 mins with your eyes shut can do the world of good. It honestly gets easier, though 😊

When you say cut his nap short, by how long?

Also you say nap at 1.30/2 for an hour or so, then awake until bedtime. Could you try starting bedtime a little earlier, aiming for sleep around 6.30? That extra 30 mins might be pushing him over the edge meaning he's overtired by 7pm and so fighting sleep

We are going to try earlier tonight - we were following wake windows but he didn’t seem tired and it was taking a long time for him to fall asleep with lots of false starts so we were pushing it a bit longer but now it’s gone the other way! It’s just becoming a 45- 1 hour session in his room reading stories and singing songs before he’ll actually fall asleep and it’s too long!

Edit - he does have dinner too, forgot to say that..

I do all the overnights when my husband is working the next day as he drives a truck and can’t be tired or it’s dangerous - when he is off, he takes him in the morning and I get a couple extra hours but then I struggle to sleep at night if I get that extra bit in the morning!

i feel you. Also do all night wakings even though I’m working because my husband is also a truck driver.

my boy is 11 months now but I read online there’s a bit regression around 9-10 months and we felt it. I found it worse than the 4 months to be honest. Can’t remember exactly but we were following wake windows roughly 3/3.5/4 with both naps being 1 hour. I don’t think anything helped really only time but I’m not going to lie it’s not like my son sleeps through now anyway. Now we are back battling the 5am wake ups.

That does sound really hard work.
Can you cut his morning nap back to a max of 45 mins? I suggest this because it should mean he sleeps a little earlier and for longer at lunchtime- a decent block here of 2 or 2.5 hours, awake by 2:30, should carry him through to a 7pm bedtime when he will be really tired (so Id recommend you start winding him down for bed by about 6:15).
When you first start to do this he will likely be knackered from about 5:30, so get some dinner into him before then.
Try it for 3 days to see if it makes any difference.

Yeah we will have a go. He only took a 50 min morning nap today so we can have a go today! We haven’t had our groups on for the last week because of the weather so I’ve just been letting him sleep as he wants and it can be quite long - most he’s done is 4 hours over the day which I’m guessing is too long but also he must need it?

2.30 to 7 seems like an awfully long time..?!

It's 4.5 hours, so not really that long, and he will probably be tired in the first few days as he adjusts (so prepare for him to be a bit grizzly). But it is doable- certainly none of my children had afternoon naps at this age and it wasn't much longer until they went to only one nap starting at noon.
If they were more tired than normal I would start their bath earlier and stretch out the bedtime routine a bit maybe put them down 15 minutes early.

The wake windows are for max 3.5 hours but we do find that quite short by the end of the day so have been going for about 4 but I just think we’re messing it all up somehow! Would kill for even a 3 hour stretch at this point .. and then I hear about all these babies sleeping through and waking cheerfully at 7.30am 😩🫠

The wake windows are a guide, follow his cues.

I read somewhere that if you fix daytime naps and get them right, nighttime sleep will follow and it works for us (generally speaking, nothing is perfect 😁)