9 month old still waking at night but day naps are great?

[Anonymous]

Can anyone help troubleshoot this little (non)sleeper??

I put him down awake for naps 9.15-10.45am and then 2-3.30pm. 3 hours daytime sleep. He goes down great (maybe just a few minutes protest) and I always wake him up on time.

And he's also mostly great at going to bed. But then the waking up early morning!!! He wakes sometime 3-4.30am and then again 5-6am. And always at different times. I'm not averse to sleep training and I did it successfully for my older kid, but I just don't have the stomach for it at this time of day. Plus his crying will wake his sister even with her white noise machine on.

My question is whether there's something about his daytime sleep that's causing him to wake so much in the very early morning?

[Anonymous]

No. Your baby is just hungry. Feed him in a dark room and put him back down. He’ll grow out of it when his stomach is bigger.

[Anonymous]

you're expecting too much sleep. cap naps at 1 hour each.

[Anonymous]

What time does he go to bed?

[Anonymous]

Op here. Thanks. He goes to bed at 7pm.

Not sure about the hungry hypothesis... He's a big baby - eats four meals a day plus breastmilk whenever he wants it. I thought at this age he should be able to sleep through without milk? Perhaps not?

[Anonymous]

Even Ferber or Weissbluth (can’t remember) says 2 wake ups at 9 months is normal.

[Anonymous]

I would push bedtime later. At 9 months he should not wake up because he’s hungry. My goal was always an 8pm bedtime… so when 3 naps was pushing bedtime later, we went to 2 naps. When 2 naps pushed bedtime later we dropped to one nap etc. At 9 months DC was sleeping 8pm-7am give or take 30 mins. If you can push the naps a bit later to do a later bedtime I would do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. Thanks. He goes to bed at 7pm.

Not sure about the hungry hypothesis... He's a big baby - eats four meals a day plus breastmilk whenever he wants it. I thought at this age he should be able to sleep through without milk? Perhaps not?

i agree with you on eating. Mine was sleeping 11 hours at night by 6 mos with no wake ups ( I did CIO) she was a big baby too but ate enough during the day,

[Anonymous]

Could just be expecting a little too much sleep? Hard to know without experimenting but by 9 months, mine was getting 3 hours of naps and about 11-11.5 hours overnight. Bedtime was pushed to about 7:30/7:45 with a 7am wake up and 2 naps. I feel like we blew through “schedules” every few weeks between 7 and 10 months and constantly needed to add a little more awake time during the day until we settled on an 8pm bedtime around 10 months. So basically a long winded way of saying we we only got 12 hours overnight sleep for a bit before needing to add in more wake time every so often til we eventually settled on 3 hours of naps and 11 hours overnight. And we didn’t have overnight wakes, but mine would wake for the day early in the morning when it was time to stretch the schedule a little more.

Every baby is different of course and not all are so sensitive to small shifts in sleep/schedules but worth considering? All the mommy blogs made me so scared of an overtired baby & less than 12 hours of sleep but mine did much better being a smidge more tired than I thought for bedtime with regards to sleeping through.