evenings are a nightmare

[ilovecakes]

my 9 month old dd goes to sleep absolutely fine at about 6.30pm.she falls asleep by herself perfectly happy-and sleeps for about half an hour.then she wakes up crying and I spend the rest of the evening trying to get her back to sleep.she doesnt appear to be uncomfortable,hungry,undertired or overtired.she naps at 9am-10.30ish and 1pm-2.30ish.i just dont understand why she can go to sleep but wont stay asleep.any ideas?????

separation anxiety?

Perhaps she thinks the 6:30 sleep is just a nap. Hav you tried pushing her bedtime back? Even just by half an hour to see if shell stay asleep longer if she's more tired. Or you could try shortening her lunchtime nap if you'd rather not push bedtime.

Does she have a bottle before bed? Does she wake up due to having a big wee in her nappy? 30-45 min is a sleep cycle for a little one and it's about right for a big drink to get through the pipes.

My DD does this (8 months). She goes down at around 7:30, sleeps for 30-45 minutes and then cries. From then on she wakes off and on for the rest of the evening.

She doesn't do it every night. It's exhausting. If you find out what the cause is, tell me!

My 1 year old does this too, always has done. It's really tough having such broken evenings isn't it, and i'm so embarrassed when people babysit.

My DS goes to sleep at 7.30ish, and wakes every hour through the evening. He seems distressed when he wakes, so definitely can't settle himself, but normally calms down & goes back to sleep quickly if we go in & hold him. It seems to be that he wakes up at the end of each sleep cycle rather than staying asleep.

It's good to know that he's not the only one (although a solution would be nice too!). I'm thinking of trying going in 5 mins before he wakes so that i can settle him when he first murmurs. Perhaps by not letting him properly wake he'd learn to sleep in longer stretches....? It seemed to work a bit for his daytime naps, which used to consistently be 30 minute power-naps and are now longer. That might've happened without my intervention though. Most things I've done to try to improve his sleep patterns have backfired, so I was hoping he'd just grow out of this one.

How dark is the room??

We had been having this a lot with our ds and in despair I put one of his Dad's unwashed shirts in the cot. He has slept soundly since then.
It might be worth a try.