8 month old sleep

[Bomama23]

i am looking for a bit of advice as I’m new to this mummy journey and I have tried pretty much everything except sleep training!

my 8 month old doesn’t sleep through the night, which is fine but we are utterly exhausted! My husband is great and we share the night so we both get a least some sleep! He is also still formula fed through the night.

my 8 month old will wake up anything between 430-530 every morning! So I keep him up until 9am before his first nap! Is this acceptable to do or should he be having an earlier nap? I have tried everything to get him back to sleep but nothing seems to work.

he usually sleeps for about 9hours overnight but very broken and then has two naps a day. One nap at 9 for usually an hour and half ish and then a nap at 2- this nap I normally stop at 330pm.

My son is not a baby that just goes to sleep! There is a lot of rocking and if we put him in his crib before he is asleep he just rolls around and gets in a state. I know this is an association and he should be sleeping independently but this just hasn’t worked for us yet!

am I getting this completely wrong? I’ve done so much reading around sleep but just don’t seem to be able to crack it!

my baby then goes to bed anywhere between 7-730pm. We tried earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, somewhere in between but struggling to find his sweet spot!

he is now on three meals a day and a proper little foodie! He drinks milk in the day but it’s hit and miss how much and whether he wants the bottle!

I know that 9 hours overnight is nowhere near enough sleep and it worries me a bit!

we didn’t have an easy start to his journey with colic and reflux! He then a couple of weeks ago ended up with COVID and it just seems he has been through so much in such a short space of time!

my little dude is usually content during the day and loves crawling everywhere and is now nearly walking too!! He is doing so well and right on track for weight gain!

he just seems to tired during the day and we find the routine before bed he is super tired 😴. It’s bath, walk around, bottle and bed and we have been doing this for a while!

Hope someone can give me a bit of advice! Just want the best for the little man and I’m constantly worrying that I’m getting it all wrong!

Morning, you’re not getting it all wrong! It’s fine to do what you’ve done. But I personally sleep trained my 6 month old and she now sleeps through mostly 7pm-6/7am.

I used to feed to sleep and there were so many wake ups and that’s why I sleeep trained. I did a gentle method and it took 2 months. We had some set backs but what I’ve learned most is that my baby will fall into any pattern if I do it consistently enough.

i use huckleberry nap times for their age.

In terms of getting enough sleep, what you need to look at is total sleep in a 24 hour period, which for your baby's age should be 12-16 hours. Although he only sleeps 9 hours at night, it seems that his naps take him up to 12 hours total. So I personally wouldn't worry about that unless he seems really tired, unhappy etc through the day.

You aren't doing anything wrong and it is perfectly normal for a baby of this age to need your input to get to sleep, many if not most babies do.

In terms of the early wake-ups, I would be inclined to try a slightly later bedtime (perhaps 7.45 or 8.00) and stick to it for a period of a week or two consistently. See if that helps at all.

Out of interest what did you do to sleep train your little one? ☝️

We tried the 8pm bedtime but my little dude just continued getting up at the same time each day!

he gets roughly 12 hours over 24 hours! Sometimes more and sometimes less!

even during naps he wakes up so have to rock him back to sleep! He is nearly 20lbs now and I don’t think my body can take much more rocking! 🥱 x

How long has he typically slept for at a nap when he wakes up? If he's had at least 30mins I would consider not trying to get him back to sleep and just accepting the shorter nap. If he has one or even two shorter naps in the day it may be that's all he needs and then he might lengthen his night sleep.

He has like 36-37 minutes then takes me less than a minute before he falls back to sleep!

it’s like his sleep cycles end but still is tired so goes back to sleep! 💤

I didn’t realise how much head scratching I would be doing!

I let him go back to sleep to ensure he gets at least 12 hours of sleep as I worry he will overtire.

mind blowing 🤯 x