Help 10m old has developed weird inability to fall asleep!

[Rainbear]

Aggggh, my little angel has been behaving really weirdly! For the last 5 days or so he's been refusing to sleep even when desperatly tired. Our normal falling asleep routine is to bfeed then roll over, have a cuddle and fall asleep. Except now, when just on the brink of sleep, he seems to have a compulsion to roll onto his tummy, crawl up the bed and stand up. This wakes him up and he starts bouncing around. If i try and lie him down again he goes ballistic. The only way i've managed to get him to sleep after much toing and froing, is literally forcing him, screaming, to the breast and eventually he takes it and passes out in sheer exhaustion. I don't feel like i'm doing the right thing. But if I just leave him to his own devices he bounces around and gets progressively whinnier as he is so tired (but doesn't sleep).
Any ideas?

Jesus, that sounds like hard work!

DD (13 months but you never know, might work for a little one) developed the habit of falling asleep after having a little play with something in her cot. The fiddling seems to keep her from standing up (and flicking on and off the light switch to alert us that she's still awake). We just put her to bed with whatever she's got in her hands at bedtime - cloth book, jack-in-a-box, champagne cork ().

Thank you, tried that this eve but no, kept rolling! Think it could be teething.

If his brain is thinking about walking/standing then there's your culprit. Extremely common. Expected. Normal. When they are on the cusp of the massive developmental change that is walking, their brain cannot shut down. They are so preoccupied with cracking this new skill that lying down and sleeping is foreign all of a sudden.

It will pass. All you can do for now is to find a way to get him to settle and not worry that this is permanent. It's a normal developmental phase.

Meant to say that of course separation anxiety and teething also rife at this age but the key thing is them wanting to stand up and seeming to do it without thinking about it.

All we could do with dd was make sure she was really, really worn out physically and have a nice relaxing evening routine. Sometimes it even worked.