help split nights for a month now
My little one is 9 months old and has always been a really good sleeper. She started sleeping through the night around 2 months old, and even on a bad night she might wake up 2–3 times, but that was pretty rare and she would usually eat and go right back to sleep. For the last month or so, though, we’ve been dealing with really bad split nights where she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and be awake for around 2 hours. We feel like we’ve tried everything—earlier bedtime, later bedtime, longer naps, shorter naps, two naps, even one nap—and nothing seems to consistently help. It’s gotten to the point where it’s affecting her total sleep in a 24-hour period, which is what’s stressing us out the most. When she wakes up during these split nights, she seems sleepy enough that we keep trying to get her back down for the entire 2 hours, but not sleepy enough to actually fall asleep. She usually isn’t upset either; if we give up and bring her into our bed, she’ll happily just play. This has been happening consistently for weeks now, and we’re honestly running out of ideas. We’re definitely exhausted, but our biggest concern is making sure she’s getting enough sleep for her little body and brain to grow and rest. For context, we bounce her on a yoga ball to get her to sleep—it’s currently the only way she’ll fall asleep. Has anyone dealt with split nights like this for this long around 9 months old? Did anything actually help, or did your baby eventually grow out of it?