Sometime in the six to nine month old time frame, most babies start to stretch out their nighttime sleeping patterns, eventually reaching as much as 9 to 10 hours of sleep at night. At this age, there’s no need at all to be alarmed when baby sleeps for long periods of time. Your baby is starting to recognize the difference between night and day and, in most cases, she will begin to realize that night time is for sleeping. As a parent, this means that you can finally ease up a bit, and get a full night’s sleep. Congratulations. You’ve made it through the tough part of raising your baby, at least as far as sleep goes.
During this time, most babies will begin to divide their sleep patterns into a long nighttime sleep and 2-3 naps during the day. If your baby does not fall into patterns that work for you and your family by himself, it’s OK to begin using some sleep training techniques to help her start regulating her sleep schedule. If he begins to cry during a scheduled sleeping time, you may consider allowing him to self soothe more, waiting longer periods before you come to attend to his wants and needs. Babies at this age will seldom wake up from being hungry, though they may waken because they need a diaper change or because they are too warm or too cold.
It is also fairly common for babies during this stage to have occasional periods where they begin waking up during the night again. This is not unusual, and usually doesn’t last too long. During this period of your baby’s life, she is developing new skills at an amazing pace. She’s learning how to sit up by herself, how to roll over, how to crawl, and how to stand and maybe even take those first few steps. This is an exciting time for parents and babies.
Everybody wakes up during the night, including adults. Usually, the waking periods are very brief, and we put ourselves back to sleep in such short order that we usually don’t even remember waking. This is true of adults and babies alike. However, when your baby is just mastering a new skill, he may not want to stop practicing just because it happens to be dark outside. The best way to help your baby start sleeping through the night again is to tend to his needs lovingly, but in a non stimulating manner. If your baby is not overly stimulated, she will get bored and go back to sleep more often than not.