3.8 year old night waking - Sleep, advice and experiences please!!!

[Leostratts]

I have a son who is 4 in April. He has always been an amazing sleeper, except for the usual illnesses, teething and regressions which were short lived.

He has always snored and mouth breathed at night - GP referred him to ENT March this year and we finally have an appointment next month. I think he has sleep apnoea and shows all the signs.

Anyway - for the last few months his sleep has gone DOWNHILL. He wakes anything between 2-10 times a night now, not crying. Just requests. Wants his drink (it’s always next to him but has to be daddy that gives it to him) wants re-tucking in, etc. I have no idea why it’s so bad now, is it a phase, could it be related to possible sleep apnoea and now it’s just turned into a habit?

We can’t leave him as he will wake his brother up and doesn’t get bored and give up, lol. He is strong willed!

He has a gate on his door, a nightlight on. Rewards and bribery do not work. Sometimes he doesn’t even remember that he woke in the night.

Does anyone have any idea why he has started doing this? Is it a phase? Is it something that might need to be resolved through ENT? Is there anything else happening and I just need to ride it out?

He doesn’t say it’s a bad dream, or anything hurting or any other reason. He just wakes, then gets put back to bed multiple times.

We are all exhausted, his behaviour in the day has also nosedived, which is noted down for ENT appointment also.

Thank you in advance for any tips, experiences or insight ❤️

Does he share a room with his brother? I can see why you would be unable to ignore it then. If not, you need to ignore unless it's really necessary. He's doing it because he gets attention.

Threadworms??

As soon as you said his daytime behaviour has nosedived it reminded me that my son's did the same day and night at that age too. We strongly feel he had been learning alot at that time and went through a huge amount of physical growing too saying his legs hurt too much to walk and was generally cranky. A few months later it became apparent how much his language had really exploded and his physical appearance was so much older when we compared photos of him!

@yipyipyop No he doesn’t - but his brother is a lighter sleeper! And when he wakes, he takes ages to settle. Then we end up all awake!
@Nc546888 Not as far as I can tell, I have checked as there has been cases of it at his nursery here and there!
@Timeforsnacks That makes a lot of sense and we have noticed the same things. How long did it last? Was it just a really long phase? Seems to be at the moment!

Up until that age these difficult learning leaps had lasted a week or two. When he was a baby they lined up with the wonder weeks app which made us realise how closely linked learning leaps are with bad behaviour.
At that age it was a really long one of about 5 weeks and it was hellish. It made our whole household feel really quite depressed to be honest but suddenly he came out of his funk and was normal again! Good luck x