10mo DS was awake for three hours last night - how do I get him back to sleep??

[runnervt]

Hi
My DS (10 months) has never been a great sleeper but for the last few weeks he's been worse than normal. He's generally in bed asleep by 8pm but then wakes around 10pm (just when I'm planning on going to bed!) and can be up for hours. For a while it was always 4 hours but last night it was only(!!) 3. We usually try patting him back to sleep which tends to work but he's only asleep for a minute or so and then he's screaming again. Feeding him (out of desperation, I'm fairly sure he's not hungry) or co-sleeping doesn't make that much difference. I've thought of trying controlled crying but what really makes him scream is me leaving the room so I don't see how it would work. We've tried leaving him but he cried for an hour before we went in to him. He's a happy wee boy during the day so I guess if he's teething it can't be that bad. Last night we even tried Medised just in case he was in pain.
He has had spells of good sleeping and did sleep from 8pm to 8am.
Any thoughts/tips would be really welcome as I've run out of ideas of what to do to improve things.

TIA

Hello,,,
Is your wee one a good eater... Mine used to be like that he is 11mnths and is much better at sleeping at night, though ive gone from 8pm bed to 10pm but thats him through to 7/8am, I found that he was wanting more solid food at tea time, and then with his bottle at bed time, he was out???, still working for us, he has his bottle around 8.30/9 and sound asleep by 10 at the latest.

kitty17
He's not a great eater of solids. He still likes his milk. The only solids he'll reliably take are yoghurt or fruit puree although I try to resist the temptation to stuff him full of them at dinner time as I reckon milk probably has more calories anyway!

Are you on the normal milk or the stronger stuff.. My wee boy had to go onto the heavy milk, and that made a hugh difference. Have you tried him on different foods, how about rusks, with his last bottle make one up and give it to him before his bottle...

runnervt - Also try Rice Pudding with some fruit Puree through it, that was another trick we used and worked.

Thanks kitty17 for the tips. He's still breastfed so I can't change his milk but the rice pudding idea sounds a good one to try.