Just a phase? 10 month old AWAKE 2 hours in the night

[FreelanceMama]

Is this normal at 10 months? My son will wake up about 1am, and then be WIDE AWAKE for around two hours. He cries v noisily if I try to rock him, or put him in the cot. The only thing that keeps him quiet now is nursing but that isn't as effective as it used to be.

He's got quite clingy in the daytime and is v frustrated at not being able to crawl. Is that connected? I work from home while his Dad looks after him most of the day. Is he making up for lack of Mummy time in the day? He got over a crap cold a week ago which may have disrupted things. Or is this just to be expected at his age?

If it's a short term phase I could manage it by going to bed v early but starting to feel a bit desperate!

Normal I think but still rubbish for you. It might get better when he can crawl. It hopefully won't be long now. Have you tried 'wake to sleep' - give the mattress a bounce shortly before he normally wakes. The theory is he will stir then go back to sleep, resetting the sleep pattern and encouraging him to kip longer. I don't think I've put it well but you can Google it if you're not familiar with it. Good luck.

My Dd has recently decided that 3 am is a bloody good time of the night for a poo, a play, a tantrum, a feed and likes to take as long about it as she ruddy well likes

Last night we were an hour and a half, and tonight's not looking any quicker. She's currently rolling about the bed, squealing to her hearts content, at the beauty of her feet I admit, they are darn cute, but I'd much rather see their beauty during day light

I feel your pain!

Another one feeling your pain!

DS2 likes to spend random hours awake in the middle of the night or, like tonight, decides that he will only sleep on me + will not be put down.

So far tonight I've had 1hr50min of sleep broken in three chunks. There are no words to describe just how shattered I am right now.

Sorry i don't have any advice for you but wanted you to know you're not alone!

I am SO glad I'm not the only one. 12mo DD woke up at 2315 and it took me until 0415 to get her back to sleep. This is the fourth night in a row we've had this nonsense. What is going on?!

Sorry - no useful advice...watching with interest!!

Sorry you're experiencing it too, but Ahh the relief to not be alone. Hope someone comes along soon to tell us that they came out of this after Xx weeks.

I'll check out the wake to sleep idea however sometimes it's 1.15am, other times 12.45 or 1.45 so not sure when I'd go in to jiggle the bed.

I re-read the No Cry Solution and came up with this plan for this week:
Earlier bedtime, aim for him to go down at 6.30pm - he doesn't nap well so is overtired if he's up later.

I go to bed as early as I can bear it so I can try to pick up some more hours/minutes before he wakes up

Extra swimming or other activities during the day to wear him out so he'll get decent daytime naps. Sometimes he only manages two bursts of 40 mins.

Try to get the afternoon nap to happen earlier - yesterday he didn't fall asleep until 4pm.

Keep the night time nursing sessions as short as possible so
I can get some more sleep.

Trying these for a week and logging his sleep patterns to see if anything improves.

Just been to see the Health Visitor this morning. She checked out our bedtime routine, and daytime routine and thought it was all good. She said if you can rule out illness and teething pain then the two other causes could be hunger and habit.

She suggested we try increasing his food intake during the day: offer more at the three meals (we're letting him self-feed so he can stop when he's full but we rarely have any leftover so at the risk of throwing food away I'm going to offer him more at mealtimes.). Also suggested we incorporate mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks: toast and hummous, ricecakes, baby biscuits, etc. She even said cake!

The other suggestion was to make nightime as boring as possible - avoid eye-contact, nursing, talking, etc. so there's no incentive to stay awake. And do some gentle controlled crying (shudder). All she recommended was going in after two minutes, comforting (pick up or leaning over and patting), then leaving the room, back again after two minutes, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat....and try this for a few days in a row.

My partner and I are a bit over the likelihood of this working because he won't be comforted by patting or picking up a lot of the time, but we think we'll give it a go at the weekend when we can catch up with sleep during the day if needed.

However, I just read "I've tried everything! Nothing works! Help!" part of the No-Cry Sleep Solution (p.209) and she has three ideas that are worth trying, if you're at your wits' end and one step away from completely losing the plot.:

1. take a break - do anything you can to clear the sleep debt a bit so you're in a better mental shape to cope. For us this means me going to bed at 8pm.
2. get serious about tackling it - have a plan, stick to the plan. For us this means taking feeding him a lot in the day seriously, and doing all we can to have him rested by bedtime.
3. a last resort gentler version of controlled crying - if you want details, send me a message and I'll summarise it for you.

Sounds like you definitely have a plan! What's the last resort CC method?

If you Google: my baby sleep guide no cry sleep solution the ten steps
You'll find a blog post summarising it - it's the last bullet point under 9. And refers to a 'temperate' crying approach. I think the point she makes in the book is that if you're getting to the point where it's harming your relationship with your baby and you're worried you'll lose it at 3am, then it's better than leaving them to cry alone, in that you stay with the baby.

We're going through this too - 9.5mths and sorry to say, he's crawling already. Doesn't wanna be put down - I wonder if is separation anxiety as he's just started part time at nursery (and won't drink milk there so compensates at night).

I'm hoping to survive by co-sleeping in the short term and then trying PPO which was successful previously but for some idiotic reason I didn't persist with it.

I keep forgetting to do the PPO (presume you mean Pantley Pull Off?) and then remembered tonight. One thing we've done two nights running is to 'reboot'. If he wakes up wide awake we do a rapid bedtime routine - low lights, nappy change, couple of stories, quick goodnight and then a quick feed. Seemed to make him sleepy a lot sooner than not putting the light on.

Yes that is what I meant by PPO!

I like the reboot idea - will give it a go.

DD was like this whenever she was/had just mastered a new skill (sitting, pulling to standing, crawling, talking). No idea how to stop it but you're not alone!

Four weeks later and we have some progress...Tuesday night he was wide awake from 2.30am to 4.30am but then last night I didn't have to go to him until he got up for the day at 6.15am this morning. For the first time ever.

The difference between the two days is that yesterday he had no sleep during the day until about 2pm when he zonked out in my arms for 45mins, and then we took him swimming. He normally falls asleep on the way back but this time we went to the supermarket and that perked him up. Tea and bath a bit later than normal, very quick bedtime routine, and then fed very quickly to sleep. So...we'll see what happens when we go swimming next week. If it leads to a good night again, then he's going to the pool every afternoon!

PS - still not crawling at 10 months and 2 weeks

feeling your pain!
DD is still not crawling at 10 months 1 wk. so frustrating my other 2 were crawling and cruising by now. she even hates tummy time.

I'm bidding on a 2nd hand jumperoo Ebay just to give him something to do other than sit, roll around and get frustrated! I think it'll only last him a few weeks but think it'll be worth it if I can get a cheap one.

we had a door bouncer which dd hated but she loves zipping about in her walker if the HV ever visits we'll have to hide it

Wow, just read this. Looks like this is a very common problem. Our 10 MO is also not crawling/cruising/talking and wants to do them all NOW. She is up 3-4 x per night for 30min-45min a time screaming/shouting/kicking basically anything other than sleeping. It is driving us mad we are like zombies. Nothing seems to help at all, tried ilk, co sleeping, holding (which stops it but she is wide awake chatting) but nothing gets her back to sleep. Not leaving her for a few mins to CIO but don't like doing that and it doesn't seem to be working either. Reading your posts I'll give more food a go and repeating the routine as think she may go for that.

Also wanted to ask if anyone has these sleep issues in the day?? My DD is fine in the day at going fr her naps which is what is confusing us.

k4mi my 9.5 mo DD is having exactly the same night time issues as well, but is also not settling in the day. She is crawling and pulling up but appears to have forgotten how to self settle and turn off. I'm back to patting to sleep which is miserable as I thought we were over thy. Ugh.

DS had many phases like this - but he did stop eventually! He is an awful sleeper but I did manage to identify some causes :

• Reflux (unfortunately this was a big problem for us until we got his meds sorted at 12 months)

• Developmental phases : he went from doing nothing at 5 months to walking at 10 - so learnt to roll, sit up, commando crawl, crawl, stand up, cruise and walk in just 5 months. We had some awful nights as he would sleep-do whatever he was learning.

• Teething : his first 7 teeth never caused him too much pain, just niggly pain I think as he'd just lie awake for hours, not crying unless I left him. But not going to sleep either

• Sleeping too well - oh yes! Once I managed to get him to only wake once or twice a night he started either waking very early or staying awake for a couple of hours in the night as he'd already slept 7 or 8 hours straight which was amazing for him, so he was already really rested (IYSWIM)

Andrea Grace's sleep method really helped us. Went from having a BF baby who could only ever BF to sleep, to a baby who night-weaned without crying once, because we'd already installed the idea of going to sleep by himself in his cot (and we upped his milk intake in the day which helped a lot).

Not what you want to hear I'm sure but my 27 month old DS still has nights like this!

Hi,
my 20 month old has been doing this for almost a year. Does anyone have any follow-up stories? Did your child ever outgrow the wake-ups? Any tips or advice would be very much appreciated!

I know this is an old thread but sounds just like my 10month old at the moment. I'm shattered and going back to work this week! Did anyone ever find anything that helped or did it just pass...?

Not sure if anyone looks at this thread but my 12 month old is waking up around midnight and is crying pretty much uncontrollably for a couple of hours. Breastfeeding seems to make it worse. Could it be indigestion? Teething? He's totally fine during the day but we have terrible nights. Anyone got any advice?

I would put it down to teething, my now 13mo has two molars but when he was cutting them he would wake in the middle of the night and take ages to settle, usually crying on and off.