Severe sleeping issues in 9 month old?

Question

for the past month or so my 9 month old basically refuses to go to sleep at night.

he use to be such a wonderful sleeper. would go down with out a fight. we could even lay him down while he was still awake, and he'd fall asleep on his own. (without crying or anything like that)

but now it is a constant fight and struggle to get him to go down for the night. he'll fall asleep while eating, and as soon as i lay him in his bed he is wide awake and having a fit.

i know he's tired, i can see it in his eyes, he just refuses to go to sleep.

we dont have any problem getting him to take a nap durring the day, and we dont let him take late naps either.

we have had the same night time routine since birth: bath, eat, then bed.

i am just at a loss of what to do. ive tried everything.

my husband is actually right now laying with him in our bed (which i am extremely against) trying to get him to go to sleep.

i refuse to let him "cry it out" or let him sleep in our bed. thoes 2 things are not an option.

i know babies sleep patterns can change, but this is just crazy.

anyone go through something similar???

Answer 1

I know it's so hard to let him cry it out what about trying 5 or 10 min of crying for the first few nights then let it get longer and longer and eventually the nighttime routine that you so dearly long for will be back in a flash he's probably testing the waters seeing what he can get away with you know it won't hurt him to give him a little nudge but if your really against it I just don't know what to say sweety good luck with your lil man!!

Answer 2

You sound like me.  Refusing to let him cry it out.  About this same age my little girl who is now 20 months old started the same thing. We eventually did the cry it out.  I was still against it, but agreed to do it, but refused to do it if the crying lasted more than 15 minutes.  Your baby might react differently, but we swaddled our little one - which she didn't like at first, cuddled her said we loved her than left her in her room with a little night light (I didn't want her to be afraid of the dark) and tried it.  She screamed, we had no success for about a week and I had to keep going in there at the 15 minute mark.  But after about a week, she started to scream less, etc. and now goes down pretty well every night.  

But this is a tough way to do it and it sucks, but that was really the only way we could get her to sleep!  We had even tried having her sleep in our bed (which we were both against) but that we gave up after three weeks of no success.

Good luck and don't worry.  Once we start thinking we have her "figured out" she decides differently and we have to scramble around to figure out what we need to do!

Answer 3

Can you try an earlier bed time? He may be over tired by the time you get him to bed. At 9 months my kids slept about 12 hours at night and had a nap in the afternoon about 1and a half hours.  

Answer 4

Perhaps he has his days and nights mixed up? My son did this and it was a nightmare because he would not sleep at night for me, but sleep almost all day with the babysitter.

First, make sure you are treating day time as such. That is, let the light in, turn on the TV, make noise, etc. Then at night, that is when things get quiet, lights go off, and so on. You may also need to restrict his naps in the day time so he is more sleepy at night. This might be impossible though, if my son was really tired, he slept no matter how much I moved him, made noise, etc. You can also try making some white noise for him like leaving the radio on static real low. I have heard that helps babies sleep.

Good luck!  

Answer 5

something that helped for my daughter when she was that age was to eat first then take a bath and we used johnsons bedtime bath, in the purple bottle, it works so well! ne ways it's very relaxing and soothes the baby and after  the bath try just having a lamp on and reading to him or singing to him and then laying him down, he may fuss for a few mins but he should be so relaxed and sleepy he should just fall asleep.