8 month old sleep issues

aka79

So my baby is now 8.5 months old. She still sleeps in our bedroom and is been breastfed along with eating solids. Here's my issue. She won't sleep for any long stretch at night. I know that different babies do the long stretch in their own time. But I need her to start sleeping longer.... I NEED it. Because I'm becoming quite frail mentally from the sleep exhaustion. I was hoping to move her out of our room and into her toddler sisters room but since she's not sleeping, I don't want her sister to be waking up at night., as she's a great sleeper,aswell as me and my husband. My marriage is hurting from this too... So the sleep needs to happen. I've tried night weaning.. But she just cries and cries until the floor boards are vibrating..but I usually give in and feed her after listening to her cry for 45 min at a time. She wont take a soother as much as ive tried to shove it in her face.. It wont happen. Nor will she take a bottle .. Again its the teath .. Its not happening.
I feed her solids regularly. She's got a big appetite and I usually give her lots of food not long before she goes to bed, thinking that might help, but it doesn't.
She's not a big daytime sleeper either,maybe 30 min in the morning and 30 min in the afternoon, the she goes down at 7pm usually. Going down is fine, it's staying down is the problem. I want your advice on what needs to be done to get her to sleep throughout the night. This has to happen for the sake of my own mental health.

shesty

Would you have the money for a sleep consultant?I know of a few friends with BF babies who didn't sleep a night til ten mths or later, so if you could hang on it might happen by itself, but otherwise maybe a couple of sessions with a sleep consultant would get you some longer stretches of sleep.
I know she'll probably still wake a couple of times at her age but if she slept longer in between and you managed to find another way to settle her, it would be worth it I think.

Edit...I would DEFINITELY work on daytime naps too.Both mine were 40 min catnappers, the first stretched her naps at 6 mths (magically) but the second didn't til about 9 mths, when she eventually dropped the third nap in a day.Is there anything you can do to help the nap situation at all?

aka79

shesty wrote: »

Would you have the money for a sleep consultant?I know of a few friends with BF babies who didn't sleep a night til ten mths or later, so if you could hang on it might happen by itself, but otherwise maybe a couple of sessions with a sleep consultant would get you some longer stretches of sleep.
I know she'll probably still wake a couple of times at her age but if she slept longer in between and you managed to find another way to settle her, it would be worth it I think.

Edit...I would DEFINITELY work on daytime naps too.Both mine were 40 min catnappers, the first stretched her naps at 6 mths (magically) but the second didn't til about 9 mths, when she eventually dropped the third nap in a day.Is there anything you can do to help the nap situation at all?

I wouldn't have the money at the moment for a sleep consultant. But I definitely would consider it. I recently wasted €50 going to my GP for help as my mental state is fragile at the moment due to the constant lethargy and exhaustion but she was no help. I mean the reason I went in the first place is that mental state is jepordised by my baby not sleeping so if I could spend money fixing the core problem then I would do it.

shesty

I do understand, I actually just don't function without sleep, and bf mine for the first 8 weeks or so nearly killed me (and the lack of sleep affected my milk supply, seems to just be how my body works).I mean I know how I got my own pair to sleep through the night but the reliance on BF is not something that I would be too sure about (it wasn't crying it out btw).

The only other suggestion might be to try a lactation consultant.Only because I know somebody whose baby was waking every 1.5 hours a night for feeds at 4 months and she just couldn't handle it anymore (there were other issues with reflux amd over-supply too) and the consultant gave her some ways to extend the sleeping period between feeds.I know your baby is older but it could be a cheaper option to investigate?

catrionanic

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. My boy is almost 12 months now, but was an awful sleeper until he was around 9.5 months-when magically his sleep just improved and he only wakes once a night since then. I am a different woman.

I also breastfeed, and although it’s easy to blame the breastfeeding, I’ve spoken to a lot of mums who changed to formula for this reason and it didn’t make one bit of difference - every baby is different, and some take longer to reach the sleeping through stage and that’s just that. Especially now that she’s on solids - you said yourself that you’ve tried filling her up on solids before bed, but she still wakes up. How would you feel if you stopped feeding and then she woke just as often - and this time you’ve to get up and go downstairs to make a bottle? It’s important to think about all the alternatives.

With my wee man, most of the time he wasn’t waking before he was hungry; he was waking because he couldn’t get back to sleep by himself and needed me to nurse him back over.

See if you can figure out why you think she’s waking so often. Is it just that she needs you to nurse her back to sleep? One thing that’s also made a big difference to our boy is him being in his own room (so our own noises don’t disturb him), with the door closed so it’s extra-quiet, and also super dark with black-out curtains.

Have you tried cosleeping? It really can be a saviour with bfing as you can sleep while she feeds. And every little bit of sleep helps.

Another thing that makes a huge difference to me, is that my husband gets up with him from 6am and I stick my earplugs in and sleep on until he leaves for work at 8.30. Those couple of hours make such a difference. On the days when my husband was away visiting family in the uk, I would notice a huge difference in my mental health.

Do you express? Having a night or two at the weekend where husband gets up and you sleep on can really help too.

They are also getting to the stage now where they know how to play us... we’ve found that when he wakes in the night, he will resettle much much more quickly, and wake less in general, if my husband goes in to resettle him rather than me.

Best of luck and look after yourself.

fits

Sleep is a developmental thing and some babies just get there sooner than others. I’m really sorry though it sounds really tough. My twins still wake regularly also but we cosleep. But some days I just stay in bed when putting them down so I get a good rest when they sleep more deeply in the earlier part of the night. Could you do something like that? Does your husband help much?

Big hug.

aka79

aka79 wrote: »

So my baby is now 8.5 months old. She still sleeps in our bedroom and is been breastfed along with eating solids. Here's my issue. She won't sleep for any long stretch at night. I know that different babies do the long stretch in their own time. But I need her to start sleeping longer.... I NEED it. Because I'm becoming quite frail mentally from the sleep exhaustion. I was hoping to move her out of our room and into her toddler sisters room but since she's not sleeping, I don't want her sister to be waking up at night., as she's a great sleeper,aswell as me and my husband. My marriage is hurting from this too... So the sleep needs to happen. I've tried night weaning.. But she just cries and cries until the floor boards are vibrating..but I usually give in and feed her after listening to her cry for 45 min at a time. She wont take a soother as much as ive tried to shove it in her face.. It wont happen. Nor will she take a bottle .. Again its the teath .. Its not happening.
I feed her solids regularly. She's got a big appetite and I usually give her lots of food not long before she goes to bed, thinking that might help, but it doesn't.
She's not a big daytime sleeper either,maybe 30 min in the morning and 30 min in the afternoon, the she goes down at 7pm usually. Going down is fine, it's staying down is the problem. I want your advice on what needs to be done to get her to sleep throughout the night. This has to happen for the sake of my own mental health.

Ya, my baby has been doing this night waking consistently since she's been born and there's no let up on her. Its every night roughly between 3 and 5 times a night. Every month I think , ok this month it will be different, she might stretch her sleep out longer.. But there's no sign of her stretching out at all. I've fed her and brought her up same way as my first, but my first sleeps at night no problem. I don't know of you've ever suffered jet lag but I feel like I'm permanently living in jet lag for the past 8 months. I'm literally just surviving every day not living every day. I can think ive aged more in the past year than I have in the past 10 years.

ncmc

It’s very hard going OP and I can see from your posts that you feel overwhelmed and can’t see the wood from the trees. My baby is 7 months and it’s only recently that he’s stopped waking multiple times. Like your baby, he was only cat-napping during the day. You NEED to get her into a proper nap schedule and for longer than 30 mins. It’s hard, trust me, I know. Some days I was spending longer settling my man than he was spending sleeping and it’s so frustrating but he’s now taking two naps of 90 mins per day and the longer stretch at night has followed. If they are overtired from lack of day sleep, they won’t sleep properly at night. I follow Lucy Wolfe on FB, she is a sleep consultant and I’ve heard wonderful things about her. I can’t afford to get her, but I’ve picked up loads of tips from her FB posts and she also has a book ‘The Baby Sleep Solution’

Basically the mistake I was making was letting my baby go too long between naps. The first nap should be about 2-2.5 hours after they wake and they should be awake for the day no later than 7:30. So the routine we have at the moment is 7:30 - awake, 8 - breakfast 9:30-11:00 nap, 1pm - lunch, 1:30/2pm - nap, 5pm - dinner, 7pm - bedtime. He occasionally will take a third short nap at 5ish, but at 8.5 months your baby is probably beyond that.

He doesn’t sleep for the full 90 mins every day, a lot of time he’ll wake and I’ll have to settle him. And it does restrict outings I can take during the day. But he is getting better and I’m hoping a few more weeks into the routine, he’ll get better at sleeping on the go.

So long story short, work on the day time naps and the night time will follow! Good luck!

fits

Hmm. I’m not sure if these rigid approaches to sleeping take into account that each baby is an individual and every day is different. I’ve always followed their lead. It’s only recently that they are taking long naps but that would be once a day. ( mine are 13 months now). But also each day can be different. This morning they were absolutely hanging by 8:30 and slept for 2.5 hours. After a good nights sleep....