9 month old sleep regression??

My twins will be 9 months this week and their sleeping has gone down the tubes the past 2 weeks. I reached my breaking point last night -- only got a total of 1 hr and 20 min of sleep ALL night long. HELP!

Background - full term, healthy, happy babies... decent sleepers all along... would always get a 6 or 7 hour stretch for the past several months and then up maybe once or 2x a night. I did CIO with DS and he eliminated his middle of the night bottle in a matter of 2 nights and a max of 20 min of crying. DD was always the better sleeper, so once that happened, life was good. 3 weeks ago they both STTN 10 hours with no wake ups for almost a whole week. It was amazing. Now we are in he L L! They won't go down without being held and falling asleep in our arms and being held for about 15 min before we put them down. Otherwise, as soon as we make the motion of putting them in the crib, they wake up shrieking. They sleep maybe 4 hours, then it's up every other hour or so on and off. When one wakes up, the other sleeps and then switches off, so it's a constant cycle of being awake. I know they don't NEED a bottle in the MOTN bc they have done fine without and are drinking plenty - 25 oz or so - during the waking hours. Sometimes it's the only thing that will quiet them and they will throw the bottle if I give them a water bottle instead. Last night a bottle didn't even work to get them back to sleep. They were just wide awake - DD wanted to play and DS was shrieking - for 4 hours. Please help... Is sleep training again and doing CIO or staying in their room and backing out slowly each night even an option at this point? Or is this just a regression stage and I have to deal with it? I don't want to torture them or us with CIO or an attempt at training if their brains are just incapable of it right now bc of all their developmental milestones? They resist their afternoon nap and will only nap in a car or stroller now - and it's not a guarantee in the afternoon that they'll even take one. In the morning I'm getting about 30-70 min from each depending on the day.


Thanks in advance!

ETA: They eat 3 meals a day on solids, snacks; they both crawl and are pulling up and trying to cruise; they babble; they are very active so I thought they would be exhausted from all the jumping etc!; They go to bed 6 pm and are up for the day at 6:30... I try to stall them for bedtime but they start getting grumpy for bed at around 5:15, so holding them off until 6 is a struggle. It doesn't matter what time I put them to bed - 6:30 is always the wake up time. Keeping them up later doesn't = a later wake up, so I figure why torture them and make them grumpy for an extra hour when they really want sleep that early...

Message edited 10/22/2012 8:35:02 PM.

Re: 9 month old sleep regression??

same position as you! DS in 9 months as well. He was a great sleeping from the beginning and then around 6 months went through a terrible regression. Around 7 months he started doing well again, now 9 months, AWFUL. We always put him to bed awake, I never rock him. I don't CIO but I do stand there rubbing his tummy and rubbing his head. I won't take him out of the crib in the middle of the night because I fear he will think he gets to do that every time. I hear that they are trying to learning new activities in their sleep so it keeps them up. I am at a total loss. We put him down around 8pm, he wakes up around 6am. He takes a long nap in the morning and a 1hr nap in the afternoon. He eats 3 meals and has 2 snacks plus 20oz of BM. I am willing to listen to any advice!?