My 9 month old baby will hysterically cry when trying to get her to sleep - HELP

[Alicebroadbean]

Baby has been going through a regression since she turned 9 months (two weeks ago). Has been resisting naps but the worst is trying to get her to sleep at night when before wasn’t hard to put her down. She won’t accept anything until she finally exhausts herself from crying and then will accept a cuddle to sleep or even resulting to driving her around in the car. Any advice? We’ve tried dropping a nap she currently has around 2.5 hours a day. But that didn’t work if anything we just had a frustrated baby all evening. Her bed time has gone from 6:30 to now hitting almost 9pm most nights!

Hello, do you mean you're trying to put her down awake and you used to be able to put now can't? Or do you mean she's asleep then immediately wakes when you put her down?

Hi, no she’s never self settled from being straight awake to going to sleep. Before she turned 9 months we would do her bedtime routine. Bath, book, bottle, sleep bag, white noise and dark room. We would walk in the room close the door and walk up and down for a couple minutes and she would fall asleep and we could place her in the cot and that would be it she was down. Now, we do the exact routine but as soon as we walk into her bedroom she’s crying instantly! Tried just putting her into the cot but after 5 mins she hysterical cries and unless we take her out of the bedroom she won’t stop crying. Then we take her into our bedroom but she will just play on our bed. She will do the “zoomies” in her sleep bag it’s almost like she’s doing everything she can to keep herself awake!

Ah yes, they do that. I used to just sit in the room and cuddle mine to sleep, because he tried everything to wake himself up and needed holding still.

It sounds like she might be overtired - a nine month old most likely still needs two naps.

Hi OP, I've just been through this myself with my little one who is now 10 months. 8-10 months is a really common age for separation anxiety to kick in (don't worry, completely normal development milestone - nothing you're doing wrong!)

Fighting sleep/ not wanting to be left at night is a common side effect of this. My baby was outright refusing to be out down in their cot/ would start crying the moment I tried to leave the room even when they looked exhausted.

We resorted to putting a travel cot up next to our bed for a few weeks so that baby knew we were there and felt comfortable to fall asleep. It worked.

Like any other development leap which affects their sleep, it will pass :)

Best of luck to you x

www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/week-10/separation-anxiety.aspx

Yeah she will seem to fall asleep aslong as it’s not in her room! She does have two naps :) morning and afternoon. She is just fighting those as well atm but she does go down for them. She has only skipped the afternoon nap twice due to absolutely resisting it!

i don’t have much advice but stand in solidarity we’re going through similar with our 4 month old. It used to take us 30-40 mins sometimes longer of rocking and bouncing to get them to sleep. But the last few nights we’ve used an exercise bouncy ball and baby has drifted off within 5, 10mins max and we’d hold them for about 20-25mins and they usually settle in cot. Not sure if this is something you can try or it’s a long term solution but it can help to reduce the time it takes your baby to fight sleep. The other thing we’ve used is the Huckleberry app it can be hit and miss with some people but we’ve found it useful and quite accurate in predicting baby’s nap times and bed times. This does change day to day as baby’s wake windows and naps vary. I hope things settle for you soon because it’s so hard hearing your baby have to fight and cry to sleep

I had two kids who never napped much so I don't really agree with the not reducing naps. DC1 never napped longer than half an hour at a time. DC2 was happy on one long nap a day from six months and dropped all naps at 18m.

If she doesn't drop off to sleep until 9pm, have you tried not putting her down until 9pm?

What's the rest of the day like timing wise? Is she on solids? When is her last solid meal? What time is her last nap? If you want her in bed for the night at 7pm, she needs to wake up from her last nap at 3pm at the absolute latest.

My son did this. We thought he just wasn’t tired and started keeping him up later. Eventually discovered he need to go to bed earlier not later!

Sounds quite familiar.. My nearly 9 month old will only go to sleep at the boob. I managed to rock him to sleep for naps a few times recently but he now instantly wails if I try. If I put him in his cot awake with the light off he'll wail. Up until the point he knows it's time to go to sleep he'll be fine/playing/being nosy/shuffling around the room. No idea how to improve things!

We had the same at nine months. Suddenly refused to be fed/cuddled to sleep and would scream every night; the worst nights were three hours of crying until she fell asleep and nothing we did soothed her. After a month of this I decided to sleep train as I felt it couldn't make things any worse and it worked really well.

Hi that’s really interesting, we have debated doing that. Would you just put her in her cot awake and try to soothe her then do the process of leaving the room for three mins at a time?