My 8-month-old daughter wakes up every night at 2 AM - like clockwork - and refuses to go to sleep until 4 AM. She does not cry and she is not sick. She just asks to be held. She is not teething(at least nothing visible in there) This has been happening for the last month or so and before that, she used to sleep 6 hours straight.

Is this common ? I am running on caffeine and don't know how much longer I can put up with this. When do babies start sleeping at least 8 hrs ?

What's her sleep like the rest of the time? 2 hours is a bit long to be alert and quiet. If she's napping too much during the rest of the day, and/or having a much-too-early bedtime that could contribute. Otherwise, it doesn't seem too unreasonable that she'd be waking. A brief awakening is pretty normal - apparently we all wake up during the night, we just know how to put ourselves back to sleep.

By the way at 6.5 months, my boys stopped sleeping through the night, too. Apparently this is common. I'm trying to figure out when things settled down a bit more... I'm thinking it wasn't soon enough to reassure you, so I'm going to stop thinking right there.

It's a bad habit. Just like any bad habit, it will be hard to break. If you are picking her up when she wakes, then she is getting rewarded, and has no reason to go back to sleep. Have you tried just going in to reassure her and leaving without picking her up? Or just leaving her be (Hey, if she's not crying...)? Also agree with twinmom that checking her sleep hours is a good idea. My son started waking at night at 11 months, and we had to just pat his back and leave again for I think about a month. Physiologically, children who weigh over 12 pounds can be expected to sleep "all night". Tell us what you have already tried...

What do you do when she wakes up? I agree with residentmom, if you pick her up, play, keep her company, then why in the world would she want to sleep? Mom's undivided attention for 2 hours is much more fun!

My son slept 12 hours at 2 months (wish his 3 month-old sister would take the hint right now, but that's antoher story) and he did start waking up on and off, for a week or two at a time, throughout the first year. I went only if he cried, nursed him (bad idea), but I refused to just keep him company. It stopped soon.

Rydys gave some great advice (I think) on that recently on this thread (if you can stomach the crying). Remember with bad habits: you can break them now and it will be hard, or you can break them later and it will be harder. But they're not going away on their own. I have a neighbor who still has to lie down with her 8 year old until she falls asleep, because that's what she's always done.

Good luck! Hope you get your rest soon!

I don't think mine slept thru night until maybe 18mos. i got the book about Ferber method for some suggestions. I agree with the other replies. Even older children (like the 8yo mentioned) can get "jack-in-the-box" syndrome and get up to sleep with parents. So you have to decide what works best for you and your child.

My daughter didnt sleep through the night until she was 3, thanks to Daddy spoiling her while I worked the graveyard shift! I had to get used to just letting her cry herself back to sleep (within reason of course) and this was VERY hard!

My older son did not sleep through the night until he was 13 months old, but he would only wake up for short periods of time, sometimes to nurse, and we were co-sleeping, so he would nurse or just lay awake quietly and go right back to sleep (I would not even wake up fully). We noticed that sometimes he would wake up then just go back to sleep after a little while (without any action or effort on our part, I thought of it as his need for the safety of hearing/smelling/sensing that mom/dad are nearby).

My younger son, who is going to be 5 soon, still wakes up 2-3 times on some nights. He comes to our bed and either wants to stay or I carry him back to his bed and he goes right back to sleep. It has been very hard on me but I am fairly convinced that the reason for this is his mild sleep apnea. My philosophy is that there is too much in this world I do not understand and there is no way for me to know all the underlying reasons for my kiddo to be waking up. I think it through this way - would I wake up in the middle of the night without cause? No. As far as we understand, physiologically is it more likely that someone would sleep through the night or wake up? Sleep. Then, there must be some reason why my kid is waking up (sleep apnea is my only theory right now), and just because I don't know/understand the reason, it is not any less legitimate. His body needs to wake up, whether I like it or not.

So, my advice is to acknowledge the child's needs while minimizing the disruption to your sleep schedule. If she is not crying then let her rest awake (apparently that's what she needs). If she is crying, she may be needing your presence, and if she is sleeping in her own room it may be helpful to move her crib to your bedroom (she may still wake up, but may be more likely to go back to sleep without waking you up). Sometimes, mom's rhythmic breathing may be just the perfect lullaby to help the baby fall back asleep. We, as "fearless and independent" grown-ups, still tend to like sleeping with someone better than sleeping alone (right?), so it only seems logical that a little person would need the comfort and reassurance of a loving and protective presence in the darkness of night just as much, if not more.

To me, it makes more sense to make adjustments that make everyone as happy as possible than to train my children to fit some questionable expectations (who decides when it is appropriate for a child to sleep through the night, whatever that may mean). Yes, children can develop bad habits and we need to be vigilant to protect them against those. But bad habits have a conscious element and spontaneously waking up in the middle of the night is hardly something a child is doing purposely and out of bad habit/being spoiled (stomping feet when not getting his/her way is a bad habit, biting fingernails is a bad habit, but waking up at 2AM (especially for an 8-month-old) is hardly a bad habit).

Best of luck and better sleep to both of you!

I disagree with Sweet. Everyone... even adults... wakes to at least some degree during the night. The problem with kiddos is not the waking up, it is the putting *themselves* back to sleep... ie: without adult input. That is what we parents need to teach our children how to do... self comfort. Just as you would teach your child to use a fork, say "please" and use the potty, you need to help them learn to go to sleep. To the OP: if your baby doesn't have a transitional object, now is the time to introduce one. This is any kind of lovey she can focus on while calming herself at night... I always give my kids one at birth (all of them, even my 5 yo, still use them). It's like Baby E said... have a hard time with it now, or a REALLY hard time with it later.

She was not crying to begin with. Now she does. Bawls her lungs out. But now she wakes up because she turns around in her crib and lies perpendicular to it. She gets stuck in that position(because her height is exactly the breadth of the crib) and wakes up. And once she wakes up, boy o boy, she does not want to go back to sleep.
I find it really hard to not go to her. I find myself making excuses (she just got out of an illness, she might be scared, etc etc) to go to her. I don't pick her up, but I try to pat her back to sleep - not even close to getting her to sleep. Last night, her dad tried one thing - he put her to sleep on a blanket on the floor, pillows on all sides and he slept by her side. WONDER of WONDERS ! She slept like a log until 7 AM.

So now, how do I get her to like the crib again ? She seems to want to move about in her sleep only in the crib. On the floor, not at all.

The experiment you staged last night has two important aspects:

1) While your main focus was testing crib vs. floor, you were also inadvertently testing sleeping with a parent in close proximity vs. sleeping alone.

2) Your findings that the baby is moving around in the crib, and subsequently or consequently or because of waking up, but is not moving around on the floor, may not be related to the crib or the floor. The association between location and sleep is likely heavily confounded by the presence of her father.

In order to separate these factors you would need to stage two separate experiments (at least).
a) Baby sleeping on the floor alone.
b) Baby sleeping in the crib but with a parent sleeping nearby (either parent moving to baby's room or crib moving to parents’ room).

I still hold that the child is waking up because of an unmet need. I think residentmom and I agree more than we disagree on the subject (yes, the point is to help the child to get herself back to sleep), but I will respectfully insist that a child not saying "please" or using a fork and a child waking up in the middle of the night are not in the same category of issues/habits.

Again, sometimes merely the sound of a (sleeping) parent's/caregiver's breathing may be enough to give a baby the needed security to fall back asleep on her own. A baby has spent the first 3-4 "hearing" months of her life (prenatally) constantly hearing mom (mom's heartbeat, mom's lung sounds, mom's bowel sounds, mom's voice), then the baby is still held a lot after birth (feeding every 3-4 hours, diaper changes every 2 hours, bathing, etc.) and is still accustomed to the sound and feel of another body always being nearby (even at night, since at the early stages babies do not sleep for more than 4-5 hours at a time). Now, by 6-8 months the baby is getting more mobile, more independent, spends more time entertaining herself (playing in a little "gym", at a little entertainment "center", simply on the floor, etc.), and also sleeps for longer periods at night - all of this means spending less time in direct contact with another body. So, the baby may be in need of reassurance that mom/dad (the other body) are still just as much a part of her/her world and that she is no less secure than she was before.

The transitional object (like a blanket), suggested by residentmom, in fact serves this very purpose (we do agree ) - it is the "constant" presence, the reassurance that someone familiar (in this case the someone is temporarily an inanimate object) is still "breathing" (existing) in close proximity whenever the baby needs them. I cannot comment on the effectiveness of the transitional object since I did not use any with my children (I thought that having the crib near our bed was a more direct way of reassuring the baby that I was still around, and this was something that was workable with our lifestyle/schedules, which obviously may not work for all families), but it is certainly another approach which addresses the same root cause (some unmet need that is waking up the child/preventing the child from going back to sleep).

Good luck and long ZZZZZZZZs to your little one and you...