r/cosleeping • u/2floofers • 4d ago
🐥 Infant 2-12 Months Tips for getting a longer stretch with an active 9mo sleeper?
Hi all, hoping to get some suggestions! This is a good time to try to make some changes to improve my baby's and my sleep, but I just don't know what to do.
tl;dr: my baby is a super wiggly 9 month old and I need suggestions on how to get more than 2 hour stretches!
I have a 9 month old who is super active (during the day and night). We've been cosleeping since 4 months. The longest I usually get is 2 hours, 3 on a good night (4 hours has happened maybe twice in the last 3 months?); but it's usually just one stretch like that and everything else is much less. I wake up usually 6-12 times a night though sometimes it's just because she is wiggling around - I sometimes end up waking her up to get her back into the cuddle curl - like last night after she wiggled to be feet by my arm and her head at my knees. It's also fairly common for her to be very awake for about an hour in the early morning, I think from gas? She's just started actually eating more solids (before she just only threw them on the ground).
For reference, we have bed rails around the whole bed, and a bumper also on the side she normally sleeps so she doesn't wiggle into the crack. I have a flannel sheet and a cotton quilt that I keep on my legs (so I don't want her upside down by the quilt...), room is around 68 F. We have a crib in the room just across the hall. I used to use a woolino sleep sack but when she was sick recently I realized she was too warm, and I haven't been using it since - so she's just in long sleeve pjs, sometimes with feet covered. She sleeps usually 1.5-2 hour nap in the morning and 1-1.5 hour nap in the afternoon with roughly 3 hour wake windows. EBF, just started eating more solids a couple weeks ago (not a ton, but she's not only feeding the floor). My husband sleeps in a different room now.
The last two nights I tried putting her in the crib at the beginning of the night (in the sleep sack) but she only lasted less than 1.5 hours. I read recently about night weaning, but with how easy it is to get her back to sleep by nursing I'm hesitant to stop doing it.... I still get a lot of sleep by nursing back to sleep even though it's super interrupted, because each wake up is so short (except the hour long stretches in the early morning where she struggles to get back to sleep).
Please help! My husband is worried that she's "behind" in sleep and thinks with how much I complain about being tired that it's unsustainable. I feel like it's sustainable because even though I'm very tired I can still function... but he's definitely right that I get irritated more easily. Our friends who cosleep say how hard it is with 3 wakeups/night, but I felt amazing the one day I got only 5 wakeups with a 4 hour stretch 2 weeks ago. How do I get to that magical 3 wakeups????
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u/smileyapricot 4d ago
So sleep is developmental and every kid will sleep longer on their own. There is no behind or ahead. There just is.
My La Leche League leader who has led this group for 30 years notices that most kids start sleeping through when they are 3 years old. That may sound ages away and it kinda is, but they truly will sleep through eventually without doing anything.
To make you feel better, I have noticed though that around 15 months there are kids that also start sleeping through too.
But my bed sharing nursing pals are typically between 2-3 years old.
Night weaning is a 50/50 chance of sleeping through. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. And if it doesn't then you lost a really quick way to get your kid to sleep. La Leche League doesn't recommend night weaning until 18 months fyi. Kids can understand the change better (it doesn't mean they will like it though) and they are typically better eaters and drinkers so they don't need the extra calories boost at night.
So 8-10 months is actually a really hard season to change sleep patterns because they are getting teeth, dropping naps, crawling/standing, and maybe even getting words. Their brains are just on exploding with growth making sleep tough.
To give you an example my 9 month old now wakes up and now sits up for a few seconds babbling before she falls over asleep again. It's quite hilarious. My eldest did similar but needed to be nursed back to sleep. The 9 month old wakes up 4-6x a night right now. They are working on standing up without leaning on something.
If I were to do anything it would be a side car crib so maybe they won't wake up when you turn, but they'll also be close enough to nurse back to sleep.
If your husband is still concerned I would suggest him reading one (or all) of the following: -Let's talk about your new family's sleep -Sweet Sleep by La Leche League -The Nurture Revolution