Please help hive mind! My 8 month old DS has developed a habit of waking every night between 11.30 and midnight, so about 4 hours after he went to bed, and then basically having another wake window.
He'll lie in his cot and to all intents and purposes be asleep so long as someone is holding his hand / stroking his chest and shushing or singing to him. Stop or move away for a minute though and he's awake and crying. I have been feeding him when he first wakes but haven't tonight as I'm certain he's not actually hungry (big baby, 80th centile, capable of going 5 hours between feeds during the day without complaint, although generally fed milk every 3.5 hours and on 3 meals of solids per day so getting all his calories in the day). I wanted to see if not lifting him out and feeding him helped him settle any faster but apparently not.
Can go on until 2am, possibly longer but that's the latest before I've given up and put him in our bed so we can get some sleep (he typically wakes again between 4am and 5am for a feed, and then up for the day at 7am).
He's napping twice a day for no more than 2.5 hours combined. Up until a month or so ago he was going from bedtime to 3ish, feeding once then quickly asleep again until wake up time.
Any ideas?? It's not sustainable for one of us to spend 2-3 hours of every night shushing and patting him and I don't want to start going to bed at 7.30pm in order to get more than a 2 hour block of sleep 