It’s Linda, owner of Sleep Tight Consultants. Today on the Sleepy Qs podcast. We’re going to talk about the 9 month sleep regression. You’ve survived the fourth trimester. You’ve made it through the four month sleep regression and now you’ve moved on. And if you’ve done any sort of sleep training, chances are good that your child is sleeping pretty well. But here it is now you’re at nine months, and all of a sudden, you’re back to having night wakenings. Maybe some nap protests and you’re struggling with sleep once again. As an aside side, this can happen earlier than nine months that your child goes through this regression. Generally speaking on average, it happens around nine months, but there are some reasons why it could happen earlier.
Causes of the 9 month sleep regression
So we’re going to talk today about the causes of this regression and also how to handle it. So there are two big causes of the nine months sleep regression. The first one is that your child has started to learn how to pull themselves up to standing. And the second one is that they’re experiencing separation anxiety.
So we’ll start with sanding first. Part of the reason why this milestone might happen sooner is if your child is ahead on their gross motor milestones. If they’re ahead, great. If they’re a little bit behind, also not a problem, all children do things when they’re ready to do them. And so unless there’s a reason that you and your doctor together have identified is a problem for your child’s development.
Then it’s not something that I would stress about if they don’t experience this milestone until a little, but later. However, on average, most children start pulling them selves up to standing, meaning that they can pull up on a couch, an ottoman, a coffee table, a step, maybe a grown up who’s sitting on the floor.
They pull themselves from the sitting down position or on their hands, hands and knees into the standing position. So, this is great. Your child is going through a new developmental leap. They’re figuring out something that they couldn’t do before. Awesome! Right? However, standing is not all that conducive to sleep.
Now make no mistake, I have seen many children’s sleep standing up, but it’s just not the most comfortable way for your child to be sleeping. So first and foremost, when your child starts pulling themselves up to standing, particularly outside of the crib, if you notice that they’re doing it while they’re playing, you want to make sure that you’ve lowered your crib mattress down to the lowest level.
I would even recommend doing this once your child figures out, how to get them selves into the seated position. Not just that your child can be put into the seated position, but that your child is able to go from being on hands and knees, pushing back, kind of rocking over one hip and getting themselves into the seated position.
Lower the mattress on the crib
At this point, if they’re able to reach that top rail of the crib, it’s more likely that they’re going to be able to pull themselves up on that even if maybe they can’t do it outside of the crib. So first and foremost, make sure that mattress is down at the lowest level. Even if your child has pulled themselves up to standing outside of the crib. In some instances, if the mattress is all the way down, they may not yet have figured out that they can pull themselves up. They may not realize that they can hold onto the slats to pull up. And if they can’t reach that top rail, then it may be a little bit harder for them to do this. Ideally, it’s great if there can be a little bit of a time period between when your child figures out outside of the crib how to stand up, and then they figure out that that can happen in the crib as well. The reason that this is really helpful is because then you can spend time teaching your child when they’re awake, when they’re playing, how to go from standing to back down into the seated position
This is important because when your child starts standing in the crib, we want to avoid a situation they stand up, you come in and lay them down. They stand up, you come in and lay them down. This is as a game, you will not win. Eventually your child will tire out and they might stay down. But now they wake up in the middle of the night and they’re standing again.
Teach your child how to sit back down
So, how do you help your child learn how to sit themselves back down? This is a really important skill for them to have, because in many cases, when your child starts standing, they can get themselves stuck in that position. Sort of with their knees locked out. And they don’t realize that they can actually lower back down.
So the best way to help your child practice this during the day is if your child has stood up at, as I was saying before, coffee table and ottoman, a chair. They’ve pulled up on. Maybe a step in your house. Then what you want to do is you want to put something down by their feet that’s going to be really good incentive for them to be able to sit back down or to reach down.
Unfortunately I don’t mean a toy that they play with all the time, even if it’s their favorite toy. What is the most incentivizing thing for your child to reach for? It’s probably a non toy item. The example I always give is your cell phone. This is something that you pay a lot out of attention to. So now your child wants to give it attention. You could put that on the floor by their feet or the TV, remote control, even something as benign as a pair of your sunglasses, as long as you’re not worried that your child might destroy them. This is going to be incentive for them to reach down. When you’re starting to work on this, you put that item on the floor and you can help your child lower at the hips so that now they start to get a sense of how that feels.
They’re lowering themselves back down with control, and then they practice that over and over. Stand them up and they sit back down. You help them stand back up or maybe they can do that on their own. And they lower back down. So you want to practice this quite a bit. So that you feel pretty confident that your child has this skill.
You can also practice putting them in the crib when they’re awake, not at a sleeping time and teaching them how to walk their hands down the crib rail. I’ve even had parents do the, cell phone by the feet trick with it in the crib again, during playtime, not at sleeping time so that they figure out how to lower themselves back down in the crib.
As I was saying before, it’s really helpful if you notice your child learning this skill, when they’re outside of the crib a little bit in advance of figuring out that they can do it in the crib, because this gives you some time to practice. And that means that once your child is in the crib and they’ve stood themselves up and you know that they have the capability of laying themselves back down, then you can reasonably expect that this is something that they’re capable of now.
I’m not saying that this is going to happen immediately, but you’re going to feel more confident in your child’s skill. And that means that if your child goes into the crib and they pulled themselves up and you go in, you can lay them down one time. But again, you don’t want to get into a, you stand up, I lay you down. You stand up, I lay you down game. Part of the process for going to sleep for children once they can stand, is going through a sitting, standing, laying routine. I’ve worked with a fair number of families who, as soon as their child stands up, they get really panicked. They worry, Oh no, you’re standing. You’re never going to go to sleep. And so they immediately always go in and lay them back down. If you know your child has this capability, let them work through it. It’s really good for children to be in and they’re sleeping space to practice their new skills and go through the process of really being able to work out how to go to sleep.
It’s very normal that children will sit and stand and lay and do it all over again until they’re ready to lay down, roll around a little bit, get themselves comfy and then fall asleep from there. So don’t panic when your child stands, if you know that he or she has this skill.
Separation anxiety
The other big piece of the nine month sleep regression is what’s known as separation anxiety. Separation anxiety is a very normal part of development and children go through various bursts of separation anxiety all the way up through toddlerhood. It is very normal, but it’s also disturbing as a parent when you have a baby who doesn’t necessarily notice that you’ve left the room or you cause any sort of separation, they don’t really care. When babies are little, you can walk out of the room, you can come back in. They don’t notice the difference. As you hit for 4 months, they might start to notice it more when you leave the room, but maybe not so care so much. But all of a sudden, now you hit this nine month point in time and you go to walk out of the room to do something completely reasonable. Like go to the bathroom, get something to eat, things that you are absolutely allowed to do. And now all of a sudden your child is in hysterics.
Very important when you are going to be actually leaving, so say for instance, you’re going to work in the morning, or if you’re working from home, you’re going into the work from home room at that point. And someone else is going to be caring for your child. You want to make sure that you say goodbye, that your child knows that you’re leaving. Even though I know that this is going to produce some tears, that’s okay. Your child is being cared for by somebody else. They are able to tolerate this. And I promise you that a few minutes later, whether you’re at home and you can still hear them, or maybe it’s spin at a daycare drop-off, if you check in with who’s providing care for your child, you will find out that your child is quite happily playing just a few minutes after they’ve been in tears due to that separation. always find that this burst of separation anxiety is the one that’s most alarming to parents because it is new.
As you move up through toddlerhood and there start to become other ebbs and flows of separation anxiety, it starts to become a little bit more commonplace and more familiar. There’s another burst, I find, that comes right somewhere between 15 and 18 months. This is. Also when children become very attached to things in particular, if your child still has a bottle at this point, this is where it can get hard to get rid of the bottle. That’s a discussion for another podcast. And then two year olds all the way up through toddlerhood can experience different bursts of separation anxiety.
In my house, we used to refer to the toddler years as the “Mommy gets you!” years. Because I think that every time I walked in the room, my toddler, whichever one, it was, it would say, “Mommy gets you! Mommy, get you!” Because they said, you instead of me.
Separation anxiety, as it relates to sleep
What does separation anxiety mean as it relates to sleep? For many children, when they’re going to sleep at bedtime, this is the biggest separation that your child has for their whole day. If you leave the house for work, your child may experience a separation at that time. But in many cases, they’re now being cared for by somebody else so your child may not feel that separation in as much of an extreme as they do when they’re going into their sleeping space and now they’re going to be on their own for the rest of the night in the safety of the crib. What does this mean when your child experiences a burst of separation anxiety at bedtime? Previously when you put your child in their sleeping space, they went in, they were awake. They didn’t cry and they fell asleep. That’s if your child is good at falling asleep on their own, they may very easily be going to sleep without any crying.
But now suddenly you put your child in bed and you walk out of the room and there are tears when there weren’t before. And I know that this can be very, very startling for parents. So what can you do about this? There is a significant body of research that shows that even just 10 minutes of very focused child directed play before bedtime can significantly cut down on the struggles that children have with separation when they go into their sleeping space on their own. This means go into their room a little bit before it’s going to be time to go to bed. Instead of going right into the bedtime routine now figure out what does your child want to play with? Let them choose, let them decide. Get on the floor, make really good eye contact, put your phone away so you’re focused a hundred percent on your child. Even just 10 minutes of this can significantly help your child with that separation that happens at bedtime.
How do you get through it?
How do you handle this nine months sleep regression? How do you help your child get through it? You may be asking. I do find that when your child goes from sleeping well, to all of a sudden waking up, this can be very startling. So as I always recommend when your child is sleeping well and they wake up suddenly, as a parent, you need to do some sort of a parenting check. It’s the only way that you will know is everything okay.? Have you thrown up, do you have a fever? Are you teething? Is that what’s happening? And of course, teething is what is always suspected. Whenever children start waking up, sometimes it can be a disruption, but other times it’s not related to teething at all. Once it becomes clear that everything is actually okay. And that this is probably actually the beginning of that nine month sleep regression. And you know that your child is capable of sitting themselves back down and you don’t have to lay them down over and over again. Then this is the point where you want your child to be able to kind of work through this and get themselves back to sleep in a way that they know how to do. It’s really important that when you’re in a regression, particularly past about the four months regression, so starting really with this nine month regression, that you’re not creating new habits or going back to old habits.
So if you’ve never done any sort of sleep training, this is the time where maybe some sleep training needs to happen. I’ve worked with a number of families where their baby was younger and they were able to put them into their sleeping space already asleep and maybe just pat them or rub their back a little. And they were able to stay asleep from there without really any trouble. But now all of a sudden, once your child can stand up, they feel themselves going into the crib and their first inclination is to stand up. And now all of that sleep that was working before all of the tricks that you had before that were effective, no longer work. This may be the time where you start some sleep training.
If you have done sleep training before, and now it’s very clear that your child has regressed and all of those beautiful hours of sleeping are no longer happening. Then once you know that you’re in the regression, it’s going to take a little bit of work to get back on track. It shouldn’t take forever. I wouldn’t expect that it should last more than about a week or so. But you may need to go back to basics and use some of the tools that you used when you first sleep trained. If you use graduated extinction, when you sleep trained, what this means is that you put your child in bed and you leave and you come back and check on them over intervals of time. In many cases, I find that this is no longer works very well once your child is experiencing separation anxiety. What happens is that you come in the room, your child is going to calm down, but now every time you leave, you forced another separation over and over again. So, this is the actual reason why, when I work with children passed about 8 months of age, I don’t actually use graduated extinction with them because this separation anxiety becomes very problematic for sleep training.
If you’ve used graduated extinction, maybe this means that you do one initial check to reassure your child that everything is okay, that you are still nearby. To reassure yourself that everything is okay, but then you’re not going back in over and over again. If, when you sleep trained that you’ve used a method that involves being very present with your child, staying with them until they’re is sleep then this can sometimes be something to go back to. This is very, very effective way to work with children once they have separation anxiety, because when you stay in the room until they’re asleep, you’re not forcing that separation because they don’t experience you leaving the room. As the process goes, you’re working your way out of the room so that you aren’t always in there forever and ever. However, if you’ve used this method to help your child learn their sleep skills, when they were younger, you can often do a modified version of this over just a couple of days and help your child get back to a place where they know how to fall asleep. They know how to go back to sleep, and you’re not pushing all of those separation anxiety buttons.
I hope that this has been helpful. I hope that this has helped you get through some of those nine months sleep regression struggles. This has been Linda Szmulewitz with the Sleepy Qs podcast. Thanks for listening in.
