10month old waking continually at 4.30-5am

[tigger15]

Our ds (never the best of sleepers) has started waking every morning at around 4.30-5 and trying to insist on playing. If we leave him in the cot he screams. If we take him into bed with us and try to get him to sleep by cuddling him and stroking his back he'll accept this for 10 secs and then up shoots his head and he starts trying to crawl over us, poke, hit etc. Eventually usually after recourse to feeding he goes back to sleep and wakes an hour later at 6.30. He is teething (has 7) has been standing/cruising since 8 months and crawling since 6 1/2.

He has rarely slept through the night and often these episodes are the 4th wake up call but on the others he can be settled either by stroking him in his cot or at worse a quick cuddle in bed. He goes to bed btwn 6.30-7.30 depending on time of last nap and sleeps on average 1.5-2.5hrs per day in two naps. We can't keep him up any later as he's so exhausted by that point and all that happens is he gets overtired and then has disturbed sleep.

Has anyone got any tips?

[Anna8888]

At ten months my daughter was going to bed at around 10pm and sleeping until 7.30am ie about 9.5 hours, same as your DS - with a similar length nap in the day.

Can you edge your DS around the clock gradually?

[fairylights]

this happened with my ds from 9-12 months, before that he was happily sleeping thru. We tried all manner of things, and even now i am not sure what really got him sleeping well again but we basically went in and lay him down every time he was up and crying (he has a dummy too) - this would sometimes be about 30 times in a row so it was very wearing - but in the end he seemed to get the message..eventually he started sleeping a little later each day and now will sometimes go til 7 - 7.30am (he is 14 mo) i know some of that time he was teething and had more sympathy then but all i can really do is sympathise! I really thought he would never sleep thru again but he did and we regained our sanity.. all the best
ps i still reckon that anything past 6am-ish is ok, so if he wakes up then and won't re-settle then i figure he really is hungry and its milk time.