The nine month sleep regression hit us hard in the Oatmeal house. We went from an easy bedtime with one wake up around 4am, to a full-on bedtime war and multiple wake ups nightly. Naps were nearly impossible; I would either have to walk Little Oats around the neighbourhood in the stroller, or drive around in the car to get her to fall asleep. On the rare occasion she would fall asleep in her crib, she would wake up 40 minutes later, screaming and ready to get up. I was exhausted, she was exhausted, and we needed to break the cycle.

Mentally, I went through the checklist of things that could be bothering her. Was she learning a new skill? Was she teething? Did she have gas? A cold? A fever? Was her room too warm? Too cold? When the answers to all of these questions were no, Mr O and I knew it was time to sleep train again. We knew she was capable of putting herself to sleep, and that she was able to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. So we picked a date, circled it on the calendar, and tackled sleep training once again.

The first thing we decided to do was get rid of Little Oats’ habit of nursing to sleep. I enjoyed the pre-bedtime snuggles, but she always woke up the second I put her down in the crib and screamed. To drop this habit, we switched up her bedtime routine a bit; I would nurse her downstairs, then Mr. O would take her upstairs and do pyjamas-books-prayers-bed. Since we wanted her to put herself to sleep, it seemed like a great idea.

Second, we knew that cry-it-out with checks had worked really well for us the last time. So, combined with the new bedtime routine, our night would look something like this:

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7:00 – Little Oats nurses

7:15 – Mr. O and Little Oats head upstairs for pyjamas, reading, and prayers

7:30 – Little Oats is put down in her crib, awake.

7:31 – The crying begins…and the timer starts.

To start off, we would set a timer for 10 minutes. Rarely did she scream constantly for 10 minutes; it was usually whimpering, whining, and crying. At the 10 minute mark, either Mr. O or I would do a check; less than 30 seconds, lay her back down and pat her back, then slip out the door. The next interval was slightly longer, and if there was a second check, the third interval was longer still.

The first night of re-training, she cried for 25 minutes total, and slept a six hour stretch. The second night she cried for about 20 minutes, and slept 5.5 hours. The third night she cried for maybe 5 minutes, and by night four, she was barely whining before falling asleep.

We weren’t ready to tackle middle of the night wake ups yet, but I found that nights she put herself to sleep, we often had fewer wake ups all together. By 10 months I could safely say that the sleep regression was over, and our sleep re-training had worked. She was going down awake for bedtime, falling asleep quickly (most of the time), and sleeping soundly. Naps were a different story all together (we dropped to one nap by about 10.5 months), but with better night time sleep, we were all doing much better.

Did you deal with a sleep regression at nine months? Did you have to re-train (or train for the first time?)


(one of the frequent naps LO had in her carseat)