Hi
My baby just turned 9 months last week. He has always been a great sleeper and has been doing 7-7 more or less although we have had a week of night wakings due to a growth spurt, and some early wakings which seemed to have sorted themselves out.
This last week he has been waking up at erratic times in the night - 10pm, midnight, 3am, 4am etc. Usually just once a night though. He stands up in his cot screaming and won't resettle unless he is held or rocked. If we put him down too early then he stands up again and screams. Tonight he woke up after only 45 minutes and was screaming for over an hour. I tried to just sit by his bed, and comfort him but he continued screaming, even when I picked him up.
He seems to have bad separation anxiety at the moment, he was crying whenever I put him down and following me around the house. He is also cruising although he has been doing that for a few weeks now. I just went back to work three days ago and my husband is looking after him at the moment.
The rest of his EASY is pretty good still and our usual day is :
7am - WU & milk
8:15 - breakfast
10am - nap
11:15 - milk
12:45 - lunch
2:30pm - nap
4pm - snack
5pm - dinner
6:30pm - milk
7pm - bed
He is still quite good at going to sleep by himself and we always put him down to sleep for naps or bedtime awake. Although this week we have had two occasions when he cried when we put him down for bedtime.
My husband has managed to resettle him a few times by lying on the floor next to him so I thought that we could try the gradual withdrawal method but tonight when I tried comforting him and sitting on the floor he still carried on screaming. How do I stop him screaming using this method? Do I just sit and watch him crying??
I am thinking this is probably due to separation anxiety and the 9 month sleep regression and am hoping it will pass but I don't want to create any new bad habits while riding it out. He will go to sleep when he is rocked which we have done in the past when he has woken up at night but it used to happen so seldom that I wasn't really worried about creating a habit before.
I don't think he is teething at the moment, although he doesn't have any teeth so I am not sure what to expect. Calpol and nurofen don't make much difference.
So, do I need to try some form of sleep training now or can I try to see what happens over the next few weeks and rock him to sleep if he needs it?
Thanks for your help.