Baby won't sleep more than 3 hours

[Dotty1000]

Please help with any suggestions...,
I'm exhausted and due back from maternity leave in a few weeks.
Baby is 9 months old has good bedtime routine goes down no problem.
She has 2 naps during the day between 1-2 hours again goes down no problem and wakes up happy.
Every single night she wakes about every 2/3 hours we put her dummy back in and she goes straight back to sleep.
She's perfectly capable of putting her own dummy in but won't do it during the night.
Have tried letting her cry it out but she just gets hysterical, stands in her cot and difficult to calm down.
Also she's in our bedroom but we don't have the option of her own room, any daytime noise/light doesn't disturb her daytime naps so not sure it could be that during the night.
Please any advice I don't know what else to try....
Also she's not hungry eats plenty and milk and hasn't needed milk during the night for a long time now

I, too, think that this is well within the bounds of normal. One of my 3 DC was sleeping through at 6/7 months but the other two kept up the regular wakings for years. DC 1 stopped feeding in the night at about 10
Months but continued to wake. DGD is 9 months and also wakes three hourly.

My Newborn Girl slept from 9 pm - 6 am EVERY NIGHT FROM Birth........

I'm a mum of 3. It's totally normal in my opinion for that age.

Wow, no. Worse advice.

If the dummy is the problem I’d love to know what’s waking my 9 month old thumb sucker every 2 hours! (She settles herself to sleep for naps and at the start of the night but in the middle of the night she needs white noise/a feed).

My first slept through from early days, my second woke hourly for 20 months and my third is up every 2 hours. Every baby is different, but it’s definitely normal for a 9 month old to wake that much.

If this is true then surely you know it's extremely unusual?

My little girl has slept through from eight weeks and I know from speaking to other mums that this is unusual.

Sleeping through from birth is vanishingly rare. And lucky.

Your advice to have no naps in the day is simply poor advice.

Nine month olds should have (according to various medical professionals) 2-4 hours of daytime sleep.

Basing advice (in a scolding and bizarrely angry tone) on your very, very unique situation as opposed to medical advice is an odd choice tbh.

Similar story to this for us too. My 9m old slept through twice, totally out the blue and unexpectedly (and hasn't since).

I have heard a protein-rich lunch and carb-rich dinner helps sleep well at night 🤷

I feel you! I remember trying everything going with my first but just believe it took time for him to be ready to sleep through (16 months!).
My little one is 6m and since about 4m he’s been waking every 1.5-2.5hr (before 4m, he could manage 6-7hrs at a time!). It is absolutely exhausting and I’m definitely trying everything I can again. I’m using the pampers app to track wake windows etc and that also has some sleep training methods in, if that’s something you’d like to do.

Thing is BABIES are creatures of HABIT. Very sensitive to their Body clock. So need to be TAUGHT new HABITS.
UNfortunately in this day and Age : Babies and Children Rule The Roost and its mum who suffers.as most mothers now work a Day Job.

Normal baby sleep is a spectrum, and this is well within it. Weaning off the dummy might help, might not. I'd also be inclined to try a feed, it's quite young to be night weaned.

Mine slept through pretty well from 8 weeks up until this age, however hit most sleep regression’s every few months (just had to ride out for a few weeks) , could they be going through this ( sorry didn’t see if they were previously sleeping well at night) it could be due to separation anxiety which we found was the reason for our night wakes at that age. Feeds, naps etc seem to be normal

Unfortunately your beliefs go against absolutely all actual research on infant sleep and development. This is nonsense.

@Dotty1000 i think we have the same baby. A great sleeper but literally just wants a dummy back in. We weaned off the dummy super easily (was done by bed time but she was younger) but nursery gave it straight back to her. Tbh by 10 months she suddenly just stopped doing it and got more confident putting the dummy back in. Not really advice, but you might be almost over it! Good luck

Good for you. You were lucky, nothing to do with your parenting, it’s entirely down to luck. DD1 still wakes up at 2.5, she’s always been a low sleep needs baby and has struggled with her sleep. DD2 will doc 6/7 hour chunks. Both breastfed and both have me parenting them. Luck of the draw.

Seriously, you're either trolling or you don't even have a tiny semblance of tact. If your baby slept through straight away then you were doing everything wrong and your baby wasn't getting the feeds that they should have been and was at risk of cot death. Not only that, there may have actually been something wrong with your baby. Either way, your opinion on this matter can be ignored as you have no idea about how to get a baby to sleep as you've never had to try, so pipe down - you know nothing.

Try weaning off dummy. First 3-4 days will be tough but we did it when my husband was off work so he could help me with hysterical child to calm him down etc. However 4 days later our little one forgot about dummy and started sleeping much better. Sadly I am not one of those lucky mums who's kids sleep through the night and my son is 2y9months already, however weaning him off dummy reduced the number of his wakes up significantly.

Had a very similar thing with my little one around the same age. As a few other posts suggested, in the end we weaned him off the dummy and that is what helped. We did this over a few weeks by first reducing when he had the dummy so it was literally just at naps and bedtime, then went cold turkey for bed. You have to deal with a few grumbles at bedtime but it only took a few nights and worked instantly for us in terms of getting a full nights sleep!

FYI it's dangerous for a newborn not to feed overnight in the earliest weeks.

So if you really allowed them to sleep through at that stage, it was a very selfish and poor decision that didn't have the child's wellbeing as a priority.

Awful.

Neither of my boys slept through until 11 months but I had to work for it. Both times I moved them out of my room and did the moving chair sleep training. Can you move baby anywhere other than your room just until they get in a good routine? Maybe in the living room and move the tv into your bedroom? I had to move my kids around temporarily but the main thing was getting baby out of my room

Yep both my kids did this. It’s not helpful but keep on trucking

My use of the word 'normal' was in response to people telling the OP it was 'normal' and just to get used to it! I hate this idea that trying to ascertain if there is actually a problem or something that could be done to help is 'wrong' or goes against attachment theory. I don't believe in crying it out BUT I also believe it is our responsibility to teach our children how to to sleep since it's a pretty vital life skill! I also appreciate that genetics and luck mean some are better and some are worse sleepers. The OP was asking for help, not to start a competition over who is the most sleep deprived! The OP needs to go back to work and sleep deprivation can be terrible for mental health. More sleep will be good for both her and her child, undoubtedly.

If it was really just down to teaching children to sleep, we'd all just do that. There's a reason that there's countless books, websites, sleep specialists all claiming to have cracked the code and still the internet is full of tired parents - because there is no magic solution.

Well yes but the attitude that it's just normal and you have to ride it out, somewhat suggests that people don't feel that way, does it not?! Maybe I'm interpreting a lot of the replies on this thread incorrectly but the majority seem to be telling the OP to just get on with rather than brainstorming a solution 🤔.

Also I do think there are two types of people. Those who are really stressed out by reading routines and tips and just want to go with what their child is doing, rather than 'nudge' them towards any different kinds of habit or pattern. And those who really do want a routine for their own sanity and therefore try to put in place structures/habits. The latter often means adjusting the day to accommodate feeds and naps etc. I'm not judging either way but I think each camp of people can find it difficult to relate to the other.

If there’s an issue, of course it needs looked at. But there is absolutely nothing in the OP that suggests of any red flags. The baby sleeps fine, wakes briefly and goes back to sleep. That is 100% normal sleep for a 9-month-old. It might even be marginally better than average. Trying to fix something that isn’t broken is a huge cause of stress and anxiety for new parents, and feeding those anxieties isn’t helpful either.