Archive Sleeping FAQ: 9-12 months

My daughter has slept through from 10pm untill6.30-7am since 9 weeks old. She then slept well after dropping the 10pm feed. During the day she also slept well although not always for 2.5 or 2 hrs recommended. She had gastro -enteritis in September followed by a bad cold. Her daytime sleep continued to be alright but at night time we had to help her. Since then she wakes erratically in the night, eg 3.30am for 1.5hrs or 11.30pm for 2 hrs. We cannot settle her despite controlled crying, feeding, medicine, water, cuddles etc. Since going to nursery, two months ago, her daytime sleep has not been so good. She will not sleep in the morning and has about an hour at 12.30pm although she has had less and more! She does not show tiredness until too late and she fights sleep. I have looked at all the subjects on the site and in the books and feel that this is a combination of too many subjects for me to make sense of it. I want to try and sort this out before it gets any worse. I can't understand why she won't settle in the night on the nights she wakes. She has woken the last 2 nights but before that slept through for a fortnight.

My daughter eats three meals a day. She has a fairly small breakfast taking around 2 dessertspoons of cereal, followed by toast.

She takes about 8-10 tablespoons of a protein meal at lunchtime and the same amount of a vegetarian tea followed by yoghurt or a fruit pudding. At teatime she can be irritable if tired but will eat well in the end. She drinks 8ozs of formula at 6.45pm and is settled at 7pm.
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My daughter was a totally contented baby until solids were introduced. Since then we have had periods of sleeping through the night and periods of regular night time waking. She is a dedicated breast feeder, who from day one rejected a bottle. She initially refused but using the books and case studies (esp. Daniel), I now have a baby who eats well. At 11 months I decided to get tough. Together with my partner I stopped feeding in the night and he settled her back to sleep with cuddles or just by tucking her in and turning on her musical star. I have followed Gina's advice on stopping breast feeding, cutting out one feed at a time, but my daughter drinks very little milk from her cup. Even hinting at stopping her bedtime breast feed results in hysterical fits. She is now back to waking twice in the night. She is easy to settle but we are exhausted and she is waking up our 2.5 year old who is very difficult to settle. We are second time parents and our daughter has had the right sleep associations from day one. We have tried leaving her for up to 45 minutes but always need to settle her in the end. Even if just to say "shush" and strike her forehead.
She has three good meals a day. In the morning she will take 2-3 ozs of formula from a cup and has a breast feed at bedtime. During the day she will take water or well diluted juice.
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My son had a cold 2 months ago. Since then he has not slept fully through the night. He wakes up 2-3 times per night, usually suffering from a blocked nose or phlegm in his throat. We have tried Olbas Oil & Karvol, but they seem to have little effect. We have tipped up the head of his cot, to elevate his head and that hasn't helped. He struggles to settle himself if left, so we have to settle him ourselves. He suffers from infantile eczema but I don't think the two problems are linked. He sometimes rubs his nose, so I wonder if he has an allergy to something. Up until this time, he followed Gina's routines well and slept through the night from 10 weeks and 7pm -7am from 4 months. We cannot manage to get through a night now without Alexander waking up.
By day he sleeps from 8.50-9.20am and 1.30-2pm. He is settled by 7.30pm. He eats three meals a day and drinks 18ozs of milk.
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My 10-month-old son is really good all day, but is tired by 7pm and goes straight to sleep in his cot. He is awake when he goes in, but very dozy and goes to sleep straight away. He may cry out once but that is all.
In the night he often wakes between 10pm and 3am and will not settle himself or go back into his cot if I take him out. He just screams and screams. I have tried everything: giving him a bottle, giving him water, giving him a cuddle, controlled crying. I gave up on this after 1hr 20 minutes at 2.30am. I have started to bring him in bed with me, where he sleeps very well. On some occasions he will sleep all the way through from 7pm to 6 or 7am. There does not seem to be any reason or pattern as to why or when.
His daytime sleep is erratic. On the 3 days he attends nursery he generally does not sleep there. On the days he is at home he will sleep for 1-1.5hrs at around 10.30am and possibly have another 20-30 minutes at about 4.30pm.
What should I do when he wakes in the night to get him to settle? Or should I be doing something in the day to get him to sleep through the night.
He takes 2x 8oz bottles at 7am and 7pm. He eats three meals a day and drinks a small amount of juice with his meals.
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My problem is night waking. My son was a good sleeper (12-13 hours a night) up to the age of seven months when he began teething. He is now nine months old. He has never been a good daytime sleeper and I have always struggled to get him to fit in with the routine fully, but generally he has a morning and an afternoon nap of anywhere between 1¼-2 hours split between the two. He always settles well at 7pm and I do not believe he has any wrong sleep associations.
I think that teething is the main cause of his night time waking. He seems to be in pain and is constantly trying to bite my face when I pick him up. (He is also quite grizzly during the day.) However, in Gina's books she says that she has rarely found teething a problem in the hundreds of babies that she has cared for. Am I wrong about this? Do other parents have night time waking due to teething? He is getting harder to put back in his cot and we have even resorted to taking him into our bed on a couple of occasions because we are so tired.
Sion sleeps in a sleeping bag and has three milk feeds a day and three good solid meals. He was 10lb when he was born and is now 24lbs.
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Hi! I am desperate for a full night’s sleep. We have 2 girls – Ella, 21 months and Megan, 9 months. Ella has pretty much always slept through (except when there is a full moon!)
Megan is a different story. At seven months she was diagnosed with reflux (prior to this, the doctor and health visitor ignored it - then we insisted on seeing a specialist privately). Symptoms were: a very strong cough, sick a lot, slow to take a bottle, can't eat lumpy food (only very puréed).
She wakes up EVERY night at 4am screaming and rigid. We have tried cranial osteopathy, homeopathy, more protein, protein before bed, carbs before bed…
To fill you in on Megan: she currently weighs 20lbs. Feeding times are: 4 am bottle, 8am breakfast, 11am bottle, 12.30 lunch, 3pm bottle, 4:30 tea, 7pm bottle. Bottles are all 8oz and she doesn't always take it all. She takes about 15 minutes to finish a full bottle. She is on SMA Gold (tried SMA staydown before she was prescribed Gaviscon), teat size 4 (Avent).
Solids - all she can eat is puréed food (she has a very strong cough from the reflux so anything lumpy she coughs and rejects). Breakfast - Weetabix mixed with lots of milk and fruit purée. Lunch and tea are puréed versions of whatever her sister has (pasta, fishfingers soup etc). Waking time - I put her to bed every 2 hours. At nursery she has much less sleep (about 1 hour a day). At home for 4 days a week she has a 2 hour sleep in the morning then one after lunch and then a nap at about 5pm. She settles herself to sleep and her bedtime routine is bath at 6:30pm and bed by 7pm. She always wakes at night between 4-4:30am. She wakes up screaming, arching her back and is inconsolable until we give her a bottle then goes straight back to sleep in her cot. We have tried everything from leaving her to scream to rocking her. She is rigid and now we can only assume that, as it is almost the same time every morning, that it is just when her stomach is empty acid comes up.
Please help! We have had about a week’s full night’s sleep since she has been born. She is the most gorgeous happy little thing apart from at 4am and the odd day here and there when the reflux is bad through the day.
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We are having problems with our 9-month-old girl, Molly, and her sleep routine (or lack of!). We have two boys aged 3 & 6 who weren't great sleepers either. Molly was born at 7½ lbs and has maintained a healthy weight gain since then. She has been in hospital a couple of times as a small baby with suspected infections that were never conclusive. A doctor also thought she had 'silent reflux' and put her on renetadine medicine. Molly has been quite behind on her solids.
This is her feeding routine at the moment:
4.30-5am - bottle, 6oz
7-8am - cereal, 5/6 spoonfuls.
11.30am - lunch 1 jar (4 month size).
2.30pm - bottle 5 oz.
5pm - dinner, as lunch but with ½ jar pudding.
7pm - bottle 7oz.
10pm - bottle 6oz.
1-2 am - bottle 6oz.
Sleep-wise she settles well at her 7pm bedtime and is happy to fall asleep by herself. But in the day she is less happy to fall quickly to sleep and can just fall asleep with exhaustion. This is also the case at 1 or 2 in the morning when she often cries for 1 or 2 hours! We have tried several times to drop the middle of the night feed but she cries for 2 hrs. She is now crawling and I feel she should be having more solids but she just won't eat more, sometimes she cries all the way through the feed. Any advice? We would be very grateful for any tips.
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My 9.5mth son is a great kid but he is waking now for 2 weeks at 5.30 am. I am trying everything. We have now got to the point where he only gets 15min sleep between 9-9.30. He then sleeps at 12.00 for 1.45 min....and then is up till 6.30 - 6.45.
If I give him longer in the morning then he cuts his afternoon sleep. If I let him sleep more in the afternoon I am afraid he will wake up earlier.
I have tried to leave him to cry in the morning - but he is very distressed as his nappy is leaking poo. He seems to mostly poo at night which means that his nappy is overflowing in the morning. I have bought him a bigger nappy but that does not seem to work. There is so much of it - he is teething but he is not ill.
I know that going in at 5.30 might start a routine itself - but he is terribly upset (not just moaning)
Once I have changed him - he is full of beans although I know that he is tired as we never get to 9.00am for his morning sleep it is more like 8am.
I am due to go back to work in Jan (I am setting up my own business) and I am desperate to change this routine as it is really making it difficult for me to get through the day.

My son drinks 16ozs milk a day, taking 8oz in the morning and evening. For breakfast he will eat 1 weetabix with half a banana and full fat milk, lunch is chicken or beef with vegetables and mashed potato, all home made. He takes a little yoghurt for dessert. Mid afternoon he has a beaker of undiluted juice and a rusk. Tea; if protein has been given at lunch then he is given vegetable puree and mash, then a dessert. If he had a vegetarian lunch he will have beef, fish or chicken at tea.
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I have looked at the forum and case studies for a solution but although my problem looks fairly common on the surface (my baby is in the habit of eating at night) there are a few issues which make it unique, hence my request for help.

My son is 9 months and still wakes in the night. He shares a room with my three-year-old. She cries out in her sleep or has nightmares or gets up for the loo several times a week which wakes him (and not really her). If she does not wake him he will usually wake anyway between 4.30 and 5.30am. He does not cry, but squawks louder and louder until I go in (sometimes I leave him squawking for up to 30 minutes before I relent). He usually needs to be fed to settle. He drinks 7/8 oz in 5 to 6 minutes (compared with his day time feeds which are smaller and he is far less enthusiastic about them). He does not fall asleep on the bottle (and never has done). When he has eaten and has been winded he goes down fully awake, chats for a few minutes then settles himself no problem at all. He will then sleep until 7.30 to 8am.

My son has never been particularly keen on milk. It is a struggle to get his daily 18-20oz into him. If he does not want to eat there is nothing you can do to persuade him. He hits the bottle away, gags and screams if you try to insist (so we don't!). Sometimes he refuses to drink his evening bottle and his intake at 6.45pm varies between 1oz and 8oz. Even if he drinks 8oz he usually needs to feed again at 5am.

My son's daily food intake is as follows: if he feeds at 5am, then I give him breakfast at 8am (cereal with 2oz milk and 2 cubes fruit). He then takes a nap around 9am (sometimes later if he has slept until 8am). This nap can be anything between 30 minutes and 1 hour 15 (but is usually around 45 minutes). He has a 6oz bottle at 11am. Often he only drinks half of that. The rest of that bottle goes into an organic cereal pudding made by Heinz or Hipp which we give to him after his lunch, so that we know he has had his full 6oz milk. Lunch is at 12-12.30pm. He has around 5 cubes of protein and vegetables (such as fish and sweet potato), 3 cubes of fruit and the cereal and milk pudding. His lunchtime nap varies as his sister needs to be in school at 1.15pm making nap time tricky. We live in an upstairs apartment so we cannot leave Harry in the buggy to nap. This means that if Harry has an early morning nap he usually has another hour before the school run (from which he is woken) in which case he will have a third nap of 45 minutes at around 4pm) or if his morning nap was later he will fall asleep on the school run and will sleep approx 1.5 hours. His overall daytime sleep, whether 2 naps or 3, rarely exceeds 3 hours. We do not do a 2pm bottle (this is why we kept the 11.30 one) as Harry is often asleep due to the school run issue. Dinner is at about 5pm and consists of 5 cubes of vegetables and potato/pasta, followed by a yoghurt or some more organic cereal with 2-3oz milk, depending on how much milk he has taken during the day. Bath is at 6pm and his evening bottle is usually at 6.45pm. He is often exhausted by then and falls asleep immediately by 7pm. As mentioned before he often does not take much of that bottle (especially if he is very tired having not had a third short sleep at 4pm), making it hard to avoid feeding him in the night as I think he is genuinely hungry. He weighs 10 kilos (22lbs).

A few questions: how do I encourage him to eat enough food in the day to make sure he is not hungry at night? In particular, how can I make sure he will drink that important evening bottle?

Am I giving him the right amounts of solids and the correct balance of proteins and carbohydrates at the right time?

Given the school run issue, if his daytime sleep is causing a problem how can I change that? Is it affecting his night sleep to have a nap as late as 4pm (he really still seems to need that given the earlier sleeps are sometimes cut short)?
Will my baby eventually become a deeper sleeper? When he wakes he does not wake my 3 year old who can sleep through anything.

Is it normal for my 3 year old to have nightmares? We leave the door ajar and the hall light on for her. What can I do to alleviate this problem so that she does not wake my baby? Do I need to separate them for a while and try to get them to share a room later on?

Please help - I work full time and have a demanding job which is tough to do when you are up 2 or 3 times a night with one or other child.
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My 11-month-old daughter settles well at 7pm. She goes down awake but is deeply asleep within seconds. She has now started waking up at 5am. She does not go back to sleep although I leave her in her cot until 7am. She will cry a little and talk a bit. She has a light projector that plays music and shines on the ceiling; this sometimes get her back to sleep but more than anything it keeps her quiet. She has a dummy (or 5) which she has always lost in the morning and wants to find it.
She is always really really hungry in the morning and once she is taken downstairs she cries until she gets her milk. She can stay awake from 5 till around 9.30 but then has a big sleep of around 2 hours. That will then be her only sleep for the day, however some days she is tired after 2 hours, has a 1 hour sleep then another 30 minutes in the afternoon. I have to wake her up after each nap so that she will go down at 7pm. She eats 3 meals a day and has around 18oz of milk. For breakfast she will eat 1/4 weetabix and 1/2 slice of toast. Lunch is a homemade main meal with a portion size about the same as a 4 month jar followed by yoghurt. Tea is a lighter meal such as vegetable pasta or cauliflower cheese with a yoghurt or fruit puree. She takes a 7oz bottle at 7am and 6.45pm and 6ozs at 2.30pm.
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My son wakes in the morning between 5.30 and 6.00 am, which is too early.
I leave him until 6.45. He has no morning nap, as he has been waking from his midday nap after 1 hour since he was around 9-months-old. He is very tired around lunch time and has started to fall asleep during his meal. He always falls straight to sleep after finishing his bottle at 7 pm. He refuses his bottle if he is held by myself or his nanny. He therefore lies in his bed, when he drinks it. He is very active during the day. How do I get my son to sleep nearer 7am?
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My 10-month-old son has been waking early - about 5.30am - since back from our holidays over 2 weeks ago. He was unwell when we returned from holiday, with a high temperature and off his food, then that got better after a week. He stopped being interested in his 2.30pm feed before we went but whilst we were out there he wanted it again, so I started giving it to him again. When we came back he had the 2.30pm feed on the days that he was off his food. Once his appetite come back I would still offer it to him, and he could take it or leave it. Yesterday he had 4oz.
He wakes at 5.30am and seems hungry - taking 8-9oz milk - and sometimes goes back to sleep until about 6.30am, or plays in cot till 6; gets bored and then calls for me. He has breakfast – he has only started getting interested again lately - then goes for his morning nap (9-9-15am) and seems to want an hour. He is grumpy for the rest of the morning if has less .
Lunch is about 11.30-11.45 - usually ok - and has water, then plays until his afternoon nap anywhere from 12.30-1pm, depending on when woke up (if he had less than 1 hour, the nap will be about 12.30); he usually has 1-1.5 hours at this nap and normally stays happy till his 5pm tea (I sometimes give it at 4.30pm if he had a 11.30am lunch and didn’t take any milk at 2.30-3 feed) .Bedtime is at 7pm.
This 5.30 am waking as seems to be a habit now - despite one day having an ideal "Gina"-day of 30 minutes in the morning and 2 hrs from 12.30 (although he woke after 45mins, I could shush back to sleep) and I thought this might have made a difference, but he still woke at 5.30am next day.
I’ve tried increasing food but can’t force it ! What else can I do?
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My son has been a very contented baby. From 6 weeks he has slept through the night from 7pm until 6.30. For the last couple of months he has started waking about 5am and is fully awake. I have been leaving him until 6.15am, at which time it becomes unbearable. He is on 3 balanced meals a day, 3 bottles of 7oz and a bedtime bottle of about 8/9 oz. I just can't seem to get him to sleep longer. He is sleeping 1 hr in the morning at about 8.30am, as he has been awake since 5am, and 2 hrs at 1.30pm. Please help as I am now so tired after getting used to sleep again. I work three mornings and need some help.
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