Baby standing up in the crib and can’t get back down: what to do

Start with safety: the mattress

According to MedlinePlus, the crib mattress should come down before your baby can sit up unaided, and should sit at its lowest level before your baby can stand. If your baby is pulling up already and the mattress is still high, lower it today.

A few more crib checks for this stage:

• Take down hanging crib toys and mobiles. MedlinePlus advises removing them once your baby first pushes up onto hands and knees, since they can strangle a baby.
• Leave the crib bare. Anything in it can turn into a step.
• Position the crib away from windows, blind cords, curtains and any furniture within your baby’s reach.
• According to MedlinePlus, children should be out of a crib by the time they reach 35 inches (89 cm) in height.

Some babies fall asleep sitting up or slumped against the rail. Once they are asleep, lay them on their back.

The standing phase is brief. Weeks of broken nights that follow it usually have little to do with the skill, and that waking is exactly what Actually Sleeping fixes.

Why babies do this

Among the milestones most babies hit by 1 year, the CDC includes “pulls up to stand”. In a small study that followed babies with home sleep recordings, babies who pulled to stand early, by 8 months, showed a period of disrupted sleep that lined up in time with the new skill. Learning to pull up comes more easily than learning to get down. So your baby stands, grows tired, and calls out for help.

How a brief phase stretches into weeks of waking

The skill settles down on its own. The pattern that formed around it often does not. Parents lay the baby down twenty times and standing turns into a game. Or the baby is rocked or fed back to sleep after every stand, and before long needs that help at every waking, whether standing or not. By the time getting down is easy, the night waking has found a new reason to carry on.

Frequently the milestone is behind you but the nights have not bounced back. The solution matches most night waking after 6 months: a baby who can fall asleep independently at bedtime and drift back to sleep between cycles. Dr. Sam writes a plan around your baby’s age, feeds and present habits, with bootcamp-style coaching ahead of the first night and daily 1:1 check-ins as new skills arrive and fade. Parents of babies this age talk about it in reviews from families of 7 to 9 month olds.

Timing plays a part as well. A baby who is not tired at bedtime has spare energy for practising, and setting the right timing for your baby is built into every plan.

Is it time to move to a bed?

Standing alone is no reason to move out of the crib. Climbing out is another story. If your toddler climbs out or has reached 35 inches, read when to move from a crib to a bed.

You may also want to read the 8 to 10 month regression.

When standing in the crib has led to weeks of broken nights, book a free consultation with Actually Sleeping.