Taking longer to settle after night wakings

[fluffyanimal]

Ds is 9 months. Over the last week or so he has started to wake regular as clockwork at 3.15am and it takes best part of 2 hours to get him back to sleep. He doesn't cry or fret once I'm with him, but lies in my arms quite calmly and wide awake. The first night it happened I eventually gave him a bottle and he soon went back to sleep but I am loath to do this again as I din't want him to wake for the milk. He hasn't been fed during the night for months so don't want to go backwards. Any thoughts / ideas?

Hi Fluffyanimal. Could you try the Baby Whisperer method of 'wake to sleep'? The principle being that if your LO wakes at the same time out of habit you set your alarm for an hour earlier and gently rouse them by massaging their hands or stroking them. As soon as you've done this you move away and the theory is that they then sleep through when they would have woken thus breaking the cycle. I don't know how successful it is as I've never had a predictabile pattern to try it out on but it might be worth a try.