8mo waking for a couple of hours in the night - what am I doing wrong?

[Tweetinat]

I know there are quite a few early waking/middle of the night threads at the mo so apologies in advance. This is just as much a vent as it is a cry for help, but I really need some advice as I'm worried about my mental health and how this might be affecting my DS.

DS is just 8mo. Since birth he (used) to know the difference between day and night, and although used to wake frequently to feed, would always drop back off to sleep immediately. From about 12w onwards he would (once a month) have a wide awake period in the middle of the night for a couple of hours but as it was so infrequent I never worried about it.

Now however, he will wake up, pretty much without fail EVERY night for a couple of hours. This could be at midnight, 2 or 5 - there is seemingly no pattern. This is coupled with early wakings too, so if he's woken at 1am say and gone back to sleep at 2.30, he could still be awake at 5.30 for the day. If his first early waking is 4.30, then usually I can get him back to sleep around 6 and he'll sleep till 8.30 or so. Also, depending on the time of this wide awake period, he will also wake a further once or twice.

At first he is very wide awake and chirpy and just sits up all the time and crawls about. Usually I end up co-sleeping in a futile attempt to get some rest next to him and also to shove boob in his mouth in the hope it might make him sleepy. If I just ignore him and leave in his cot, he starts to cry and get agitated. I treat all these night wakings the same; no lights, no discussion, no interaction. I offer boob, keep laying him down and then dummy. The last few nights he has graduated to getting very very angry and screaming the house down - I have no idea why.

After about an hour/hour and a half of this rigmarole I start to get very angry and frustrated and my laying him down gets less and less gentle. Sometimes I shout (not quite shouting, but loud stern voice) 'its nighttime, go to sleep' which is horrible for me to do and sometimes understandably scares him. I HATE what I'm doing but I'm so freaking exhausted its out of my mouth before I can stop.

When he doesn't wake in the night for this, mornings seem to start between 5 and 6. Normally I just ignore him (in my bed) for 45mins to an hour then reluctantly get up and start to day.

I am running on empty and most of the day am extremely tired, irritable and angry. I find it very hard to interact with my DS/talk to him and find myself operating in silence and up leaving him (supervised) to play with himself. I also end up shouting at DH in front of DS on a very frequent basis and I am so very worried that this is affecting him.

Some relevant info:

• We have blackout blind (velux so pitch black)

• he is tanked up on calpol and cough medicine as he's recently had a cold

• there's a fan in his room as its 28degrees up there so he sleeps in a nappy only

• We have a consistent bedtime routine of bath (6,15-6.45), boob (6.45-7.15), bed (7-7.30) and leave him to self settle at night (if possible).

• If he wakes up at 6, then he has 3 naps in the day totally 3hrs. If he wakes up at 9, then it's normally 2.

• He's getting approx 9hrs sleep/night after these shenanigans.

• He struggles to stay awake for more than 2.5 hrs in the day so his naps are led by him. If we're out and about then he will go longer.

We've tried less naps, more naps, no naps after 5pm, short 30m catnap at 5pm, bedtime at 7, bedtime at 8.

I'm at a complete loss what to do next but I feel I need help as I just want to walk out of that door and never come back. Does anyone have any ideas?

Add on top of this a sudden refusal to sleep at all. He woke at 4.30 this morning and absolutely refuses to go back to sleep (cue screaming like I have never heard before if we even try when we see he's sleepy)... So he is cronically overtired which I don't think is helping. This refusal to nap has happened quite a few times this week.

My sympathies. We're just 9 months here and the last week has been HELL, I was going to start a thread about it .

I think the heat and teething are more than a little to blame. We're also recovering from a cold too - he only seems to cough at night though. Also he has started crawling and pulling up and cruising all within the last 2 weeks and I think some of it is to do with this big leap in his development.

The worst of his behaviour is being absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to get to sleep - cue screaming and crying and standing up for hours. Even if I feed him to sleep he will wake up within half an hour of being put in the cot and NOT go back to sleep. Then in the night he has at least 2 BF, he used to go straight back in his cot no problems, but now again he seems to whiffle himself awake and then we get more screaming. On top of that he is waking early, used to be 7am, but yesterday it was 5.30 . All this has sent his daytime naps to pot, so we no longer have any real routine.

I have no answers, but lots of sympathy. I'm just hoping this is a phase, that it will pass. I don't recall DD going through this particularly, but she used to take a dummy at night so maybe that helped. DS is a total dummy refuser though . I just want my happy easy-going boy back

I;m afraid that I don't have any particular ideas to help but could it be that he has just learned a new motor skill e.g. crawling, rolling, pulling up? When my ds was learning a new skill he seemed absolutely driven to practise, practise, practise and sleep often went out the window. After a week or so when he had mastered the new skill the need to practise stopped and his sleep improved again.

Probably cough and heat don't help, but there's not a lot you can do about those.

You have my sympathies. Hopefully by this time next week it sill all be different.

Same here, sorry, 10 months. I'm trying to improve daytime naps, which seems to be helping a bit - by maintaining my sanity, not by making better sleep at night. Lionstar's description
'The worst of his behaviour is being absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to get to sleep - cue screaming and crying and standing up for hours. Even if I feed him to sleep he will wake up within half an hour of being put in the cot and NOT go back to sleep. Then in the night he has at least 2 BF, he used to go straight back in his cot no problems, but now again he seems to whiffle himself awake and then we get more screaming. On top of that he is waking early, used to be 7am, but yesterday it was 5.30 '
is exactly my baby!
Sympathy! Any tips to share, anyone? I've done some co-sleeping in the spare room some nights, just to get a bit of sleep myself.

Sympathy from me too tweetinat. I know exactly how you feel with the ds relationship thing - sleep deprivation is a real real killer in so many ways. but sorry no answers, if I ever find something that helps with the long waking will let you know.

Sympathy from me too but agree with other posters it's developmental or teeth. I remember dd did this and it was horrendous. One night I put a mattress on the floor in the spare room and tried to sleep while she rampaged and she bashed me on the head with a book till I read it her. I found it helped co-sleeping for naps so I could catch up in the day. It will end!

I feel for you Tweetinat. I can remember my DS having some instances of night wakings (ie actually getting up and playing as opposed to waking and going back to sleep) but not over a long period of time.

It's hard to see ahead when you're so shattered but 8mo really is very small and the phase will pass. When my son was older - probably around 14/15 months, we occasionally ended up 'playing dead' so he got bored and came back into bed and snuggled. At 8mo though, that's way too early, IMO, for those tactics though.

You could try co-sleeping from the start of the night, if that's something you are comfortable with. My DS definitely slept better when I was close by (no idea how he knew!).

Definitely try and get some zzzzs in the day though to catch up on your own sleep. It WILL pass.

I really feel for you. I remember one morning after being awake most of the night with my ds2, he wouldn't go to sleep for his nap. I put him in the buggy and was pushing it backwards and forwards in the kitchen and he just kept crying. In the end I just started to vigorously shake the buggy and ended up shouting "go to f-ing sleep". Which of course made him cry more and made me feel awful. Another morning I was so tired and had to take ds1 to nursery. DS1 was whinging and ds2 crying and I kicked the cupboard door shut in anger. Of course my foot went through it and then I had a broken cupboard door, plus two crying children.

The good news is that my ds2 is now 1.5 and I can look back and laugh at those dreadful sleep deprived days. Suggest you head over to this baby sleep website and see if you can find some advice there. That's where I go everytime a sleep problem comes up.

I know it doesn't help now, but I promise you, it does get better!

Oh my sympathies are so with you and I wish I had the magic answer. It's awful. I was up at 4.15am today until 5.30am - my DD cries nonstop - tried controlled crying,tried holding in our arms, tried just putting her back to bed with her comforter but all of those didn't help. I'm pretty much at the end of my tether too.

She has been like this for the past week, she's 9 months old. I can only guess it's teething, the heat and a heavy cold. But it's bloody awful for us mums to cope with. I've burst into tears several times already today through sheer tiredness and frustration.

Hope your situation improves soon - I just keep hoping and crossing my fingers that this is all a phase. Just hoping beyond hope that's it's shortlived for all of us!

Ugh, you poor things.

I suspect this will shed some light on your hellish situations...

TTSP, TTSP, TTSP......

I'm sorry I've been away for a few days - trying to catch up with some zzzzz's whilst DH has been home to help.

Wow - so many of you out there going through the same thing! It really is bloody awful isn't it - I ended up screeching at DH this weekend, 'I hate you, I hate him and I hate my f*g life' before throwing DS's comforters at the door and flouncing out of the room at 3am. and bippuhippy, I'm ashamed to say that those words have left my mouth on more than a few occassions over the last couple of weeks.

The sad thing is that I was so scared about having a child because I know that I'm selfish and too short tempered and impatient but convinced myself that I'd be a good mum... As bad as the sleep deprivation is, the guilt that I'm in some way screwing up my child is even worse DH wants another someday but all I can think is that there is NO WAY IN HELL that I'm going to (a) put myself through this again and (b) put another child of mine through my miserable care again! Has sleep deprivation ever put others permanently off having more kids?

On a positive side, the almost crawling that has been going on for weeks has finally graduated to full on crawling now, together with being able to pull himself up to standing, so I'm hoping that the developmental leaps will begin to slow down and let him (and me) rest a bit. I know it will pass, but I really don't know for how much longer I can cope with this!

knickyknocks - gosh, my DS's screaming is random and sometimes there isn't any at all. To have your DD crying nonstop must be absolutely soul destroying. What do you end up doing? I find that I have no idea whatsoever when he's like that and go from trying to cuddle him calm to leaving him on the bed with me sitting next to him and trying to calm with my voice.

chicadee - last night we sorta ended up co-sleeping from the start of the night as he woke up just as I'd dropped off to sleep and I was in that groggy, no idea what I'm doing phase, but tbh it was awful as he just wriggles and crawls around and I end up lying there wide awake convinced he's about to launch himself off the bed!!

DH is also convinced that we're 'teaching him bad habits' that we need to put a stop to, so he's not keen that I continue. I've told him that sleep training really shouldn't be done if they're ill/teething etc and I don't really want to try CC so I'm hoping he'll grow out of this himself...

Anyhow, I think I hear squawking from the monitor so need to go rescue him from his cot... Thank for all the support and I hope it gets better for you guys too!

Yes, let's all cross fingers for tonight.

Funny you should mention DC number 2. My fiance would love another child, but I'm just not sure whether I could take this kind of sleep deprivation again - and I'm not sure our relationship could either, so completely understand why you say that you don't think you could do it again.

As for the non-stop crying, I just go with cuddling her in my arms sitting on a beanbag whilst my bottom goes numb (those things are not comfy at 4am in the morning - plus it's a bit tricky to get up from when she finally goes off to sleep - must be my ageing knees!)
But you're right it is soul destroying. Found myself bursting into tears several times today. Just have to keep reminding ourselves that this phase won't last forever....Good luck tonight. I'll keep my fingers crossed that things are better for you tonight.

Just had a read of this thread as my DS went through a phase a few days ago of waking at 2/3/4am and babbling, waving his arms around, standing up etc for an hour or two at night. The only way I could get him back to sleep was pop him on my chest for half an hour or so and pat

I've done the angry screeching thing - I adopted the tactic of putting DS in the cot and walking out. For some reason, when I'm in a dark room with a crying/non sleepy baby my mind goes lala. Once I go out into the "light" I realise what I'm doing. I also find that picturing my DS's face really helps. I went through a similar phase at 4 months (never slept longer than 90 mins for weeks and weeks).

Ironically, the calmer I am, the easier it is to settle DS (or the Beast as we call him).

The other thing that helps is getting out in the sun. So even if you're tired (I'm always tired), just having the sun shine on you makes a huge difference.

Sounds like the 8/9 month sleep regression to me; it's very common. See here, here and here.

Hope it improves soon.