The 9 month sleep regression
If you have been around here a while, you have likely become familiar with the term sleep regression. In fact, from looking at my website analytics, I can tell that many parents come to my website after searching for the terms “sleep regression.” There are several of them, but here we are going to focus on just the one that occurs around roughly 9 months. To clarify, whenever we are talking about anything that is the result of development (and sleep regressions most often are related to your child’s development) it is important to adjust for any prematurity as these different milestones are related to your child’s neurological development. Also, while this is referred to the 9 month regression, it can start as early as 8 months or even later, closer to 10 months.
The 9 month regression is often related to a couple of different factors, both again related to development:
#1, this is when the first really big burst of separation anxiety happens for babies. This often comes as a shock to new parents. In the beginning of your baby’s life, while you may not have a lot of freedom to do the things you used to be able to easily do in life, you could be generally confident that if you walked out of the room briefly to do something basic like go to the bathroom, your child probably wouldn’t really notice. Eventually they may get fussy, but they didn’t immediately notice you were gone. Now you leave and instantly they are screaming as though someone has severed a limb. In some ways, that is how it feels. At this stage, your child has now learned that you are a separate being from them and in that separateness, you can move farther away from them. While your inclination might be to sneak away from your child when this happens, it is important to say good-bye, even to a baby so that your child isn’t becoming hypervigilant that the minute they aren’t paying attention, you are going to disappear. Separation anxiety ebbs and flows all throughout toddlerhood with some children experiencing it more intensely then others. Please remember that while this can feel startling initially, it is normal.
#2, this is often when children learn how to pull themselves up to the standing position. I have seen children figure this out as early as 6 months, but it is most often a 9 month skill. While there is nothing bad about standing, laying down is certainly more conducive to sleep although I have seen many a toddler sleep for hours while standing. When you see your child starting to pull themselves up to standing while playing, this is your opportunity to teach them how to sit and lay themselves back down before they start doing it in the crib. Check out this podcast episode to learn how to teach your child how to get back down from the standing position. Once they are pulling up to standing while playing, be sure to lower their crib mattress all the way to the lowest level. This may buy you some time as some children don’t initially realize that they can pull up on the crib slats, but if they can reach the top rail, they will pull up from there. It is important that your child is learning how to lay themselves back down so that they don’t get stuck standing. Once they can lay themselves back down, my rule is that you can always lay your child down one time. After that, they will need to do it themselves otherwise you get into a crazy game of “You stand up, I lay you down.” You will not win this game.
What do you do about this regression?
Just like any regression, they can often take a couple of weeks to navigate through. With any major movement milestone (like rolling, crawling, learning how to put yourself into the seated position, pulling to stand and walking), you may see the regression in advance of your child mastering the skill because that is when their brain is starting to think about their impending new trick. Beyond ensuring that you are working in helping your child master the skill of laying themselves back down, if you have already done some sleep training, it is important not to go back to old habits as this can lead to those old habits becoming the new normal. Once you realize that the regression is happening, you may need to return to your previous sleep training methods for a few nights to get back on track. This can be effective with both extinction (putting your child down, leaving and not returning) or behavioral fading (using your presence in the room as a secure base to help your child be reassured when falling asleep). If you have used a graduated extinction approach (going in and out of the room, checking on your child), this is now likely to make things worse. That is because now that separation anxiety has started, every time you come in the room, your child may calm down and now every time you leave, you have forced another separation. This can cause them to escalate more and more. In these cases, I will often suggest doing one check to offer brief reassurance, but not going back in afterwards.
The other thing I will often see is that prior to this regression, parents were putting their child into the crib in what seemed like an awake state but was really pretty drowsy. While this may have worked before when they would just roll over and be asleep soon after, now that they are both capable of standing and are more alert, as soon as they notice that they are in the crib, they immediately pop up and start screaming. This is one of the many reasons why I work with families to teach their children how to go into the crib FULLY awake at bedtime. It should take your child anywhere from 10-20 minutes of rolling around, rubbing their face in the mattress, maybe moaning and fussing as they have moved past crying, to fall asleep. Now once they are standing, you will see your child spends that time practicing their tricks of standing and sitting and laying down over and over and finally staying laying down and working on going to sleep. This is all part of the soothing process and is something that ultimately helps them have the tools to get back to sleep overnight and especially in the early AM hours.