Surviving the 9-Month Sleep Regression

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in the dark wearing a pair of maternity leggings I should have burned six months ago and my husband Dave's faded college hoodie, staring at Maya. She was gripping the top rail of her crib like a tiny, furious inmate demanding her one phone call. She was screaming, of course. Not a pain scream, but an indignant, fully awake roar. And she was standing. This was new. Well, new as of three days prior, which coincided exactly with the moment I entirely stopped sleeping.

My coffee cup from yesterday morning was sitting on her dresser, completely full and stone cold, mocking me. Dave, who can somehow sleep through a literal thunderstorm, finally shuffled into the room rubbing his eyes and muttered something incredibly helpful like, "Is she awake?" No, Dave, she's sleep-yodeling. Honestly.

This is the reality of this specific milestone. You think you've figured out your infant, you think you've a routine, and then suddenly their brain explodes with new skills and they become an entirely different, incredibly loud roommate.

The evolutionary glitch of the midnight stand-off

My doctor, Dr. Evans, who always looks so aggressively rested it makes me want to throw my lukewarm coffee at his pristine white coat, had warned me at her wellness check. He was like, well they start pulling to stand around this age, and sometimes they practice in their sleep. Practice? In their sleep? What kind of biological glitch is that? He muttered something about how they just haven't figured out the mechanics of bending their knees to sit back down yet. So they wake up, instinctively haul their bodies upward, and then get stuck standing there in the dark, exhausted and terrified of their own verticality.

Anyway, the point is, your beautifully sleeping baby is gone. Poof.

All the Instagram sleep consultants are basically like just lay them back down and pat their mattress and leave the room without making eye contact—which is absolutely hilarious. Have you ever tried to fold a rigid, screaming infant's legs in the pitch dark without looking at them? It's like trying to collapse a rusted beach chair while a siren blares in your ear. I ended up just picking her up, at which point she immediately stopped crying and tried to eat my nose. I ended up holding my hand flat on her chest for forty-five minutes while contorted over the crib rail until my lower back went completely numb.

The great kitchen cabinet wars of our living room

Because she was pulling up in the crib, it meant she was pulling up everywhere else, too. This is the age where they become terrifyingly mobile. And not just cute, stationary rolling on a blanket. I mean active, destructive, kamikaze mobility. Leo, my oldest, learned to combat-crawl at this exact age and made it his life's mission to find every single electrical cord in our house and try to floss with it.

Maya skipped the whole army-crawl phase entirely and went straight to hauling herself up on the coffee table, the couch, the dog, my leg while I was trying to drain boiling pasta water. It's just constant peril. You suddenly realize your entire house is just a series of sharp edges and toxic chemicals waiting to happen.

So we had to babyproof. Which is just a polite way of saying you've to completely ruin your house. Dave spent an entire Saturday drilling these plastic magnetic latches into our kitchen cabinets that were supposedly "adult-friendly" but I literally had to use a butter knife to pry open the door to get to my own coffee mugs for six months. We bought these hideous foam corner guards that were marketed as "natural wood tone" but actually looked like cheap beige band-aids stuck all over our nice mid-century coffee table. And Maya? She just walked over, peeled them off with her new tiny fingernails, and tried to eat the adhesive backing. So that was a really fun, panicked call to poison control. The guy at poison control sounded so deeply tired, bless him. He just sighed and said it was non-toxic tape and to give her some water. The sheer panic of an older baby finding something dangerous on the floor ages you five years in a single afternoon.

(If you're currently trapped under a newly mobile infant and hiding in the bathroom for five minutes of peace, treat yourself to browsing the organic baby clothes collection. You deserve it.)

Things that actually survive the destruction

Actually, speaking of them pulling up on literally everything in your home, I've to talk about the Rainbow Baby Gym. When Leo was this age, my mother-in-law bought us this flimsy plastic activity center thing that played three incredibly off-pitch electronic songs. The second he tried to pull up on it, the whole thing tipped over onto his face. Absolute disaster. Tears everywhere.

But with Maya, we had this wooden rainbow gym from Kianao. I originally got it when she was a newborn just for her to lay under and stare at the little hanging fabric elephant, but around the nine-month mark, she realized the wooden A-frame was incredibly sturdy. She used it to haul her little body up to a standing position fifty times a day. And it didn't tip! Plus it's genuinely pretty. Like, it doesn't look like a primary-colored plastic explosion in my living room, which is vital for my mental health when the rest of the house looks like a bomb went off. It's one of the few things that seriously lasted from the newborn potato phase into the destructive mobile phase.

Throwing blueberries and other new hobbies

And then there's the food. Oh god, the food.

At that same appointment, Dr. Evans asked if she was developing her pincer grasp. That's the little thumb-and-forefinger pinch they do to pick up lint off your rug. I vaguely remembered reading on some crunchy mom blog that I was supposed to be giving her tiny pieces of soft things so she could practice feeding herself. I started chopping steamed carrots and avocados into microscopic cubes because I was absolutely terrified of her choking. Like, paralyzing anxiety. I read one tragic story about a grape and didn't sleep for a week.

But they WANT to feed themselves. They demand it. If I tried to put a spoon near Maya's mouth she would smack it out of my hand like a tiny ninja. So you give them a piece of banana, and they proudly pick it up with their little pincer grasp, squish it entirely into their fist, and then rub that fist directly into their eyeball. Every single meal requires a full hose-down in the bathtub afterward.

Sweat, drool, and giving up on real outfits

This is exactly why I basically stopped putting them in actual outfits. Because between the mashed banana smears, the buckets of drool from the constant teething, and the sheer amount of sweat they produce from crawling across the rug at top speed, clothes just get ruined. Trying to put a pair of stiff denim baby jeans on a child who's doing barrel rolls on the floor is a form of torture I refuse to participate in.

I started exclusively dressing Maya in the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit. Specifically the sleeveless one. Honestly? It's just easier. The neck has these envelope shoulders that stretch so I don't have to wrestle it over her giant head (both my kids have 90th percentile heads, my poor pelvis), and the organic cotton genuinely breathes. I noticed when I put her in cheap polyester blend stuff from big box stores, she'd get these little angry red heat rash bumps on her chest from the friction of crawling. The organic cotton stopped that completely. We have like six of the earth-tone ones and they just go in rotation. Wash, wear, smear with sweet potato, repeat.

The teeth are coming from inside the house

Oh, and the teething! They're sprouting teeth left and right. Maya got her top four simultaneously. It was a bloodbath. She was just constantly gnawing on her own hands, the crib rail, my shoulder.

I bought her the Bunny Teething Rattle because it was ridiculously cute with the little crochet ears and I thought it would look sweet in photos. Honestly? It's fine. It looks adorable, but when she was in real, screaming, middle-of-the-night pain, she didn't care about the cute crochet bunny. The yarn just got instantly soaked in drool anyway. She only wanted to gnaw aggressively on the plain wooden ring part, or my actual knuckle. The untreated wood is seriously great because it's hard enough to put real pressure on their swollen gums, but don't expect the cute bunny face to magically cure their teething rage. Sometimes they just need to chew on something solid and yell.

Oh, and they'll scream bloody murder if you walk out of the room to pee or get a glass of water, so just accept that you do everything with an audience clinging to your left leg now.

Surviving the morning after

Anyway, the point is, this phase is just a lot. You're dealing with a tiny person who suddenly has strong opinions, aggressive mobility, and the upper body strength of a gymnast, but the emotional regulation of a... well, an infant. It's exhausting.

That night at 3:14 AM? I finally got her to lay down. I crept out of the room like a burglar, holding my breath. But the next morning, when she woke up (at 6:00 AM, because sleeping in is a joke from a past life), she pulled herself up on the crib rail, looked right at my tired, unwashed face, and clearly babbled "mamamama" for the first time.

And I completely melted. I forgot about the back pain and the cold coffee. It's a brutal stage, but watching them honestly become a person is pretty damn cool.

Check out Kianao's full line of sustainable baby essentials before you dive into the FAQ below—because if you're in this stage right now, you're gonna need all the durable, washable help you can get.

Questions I frantically googled at 2 AM

Why is my baby waking up every hour again?

Because their brain is exploding. Okay, my doctor said it's because they're practicing their new motor skills in their sleep, but honestly it feels like torture. They just learn to pull up and can't figure out how to get back down. It usually passes in like, two or three weeks, but those weeks are hell. Do whatever you've to do to survive. Drink the old coffee.

What should they be eating right now?

Whatever you can chop into a million tiny, squishy pieces that they'll immediately throw on your freshly swept floor. Soft fruits, steamed veggies, little bits of avocado. You have to avoid honey and huge choking hazards like whole grapes or hot dogs, obviously. But honestly, most of my kids' actual nutrition at this age came from breastmilk or formula anyway. The solid food was just a very messy sensory art project.

Are shoes necessary for all this standing?

God no. My doctor literally laughed at me when I asked if I needed to buy supportive sneakers for cruising around the living room. They need to feel the floor with their bare feet to learn how to balance. If your house is freezing, just use those little socks with the rubber grips on the bottom, but definitely no stiff shoes yet. Save your money.

Why is the separation anxiety suddenly so intense?

Object permanence! They finally realize that when you leave the room, you still exist somewhere else, and they're absolutely furious that you didn't take them with you. It's totally normal developmentally, but it means you'll be carrying a thirty-pound weight on your hip while trying to make toast for the foreseeable future.

How do I stop them from falling when pulling up?

You don't. You just move the sharpest objects out of the way and let them topple over onto their padded diaper butts. They're basically made of rubber right now. Just cover the worst corners of your coffee table and pray.