9 month old suddenly awake for ages at 2am

[MiniMaxi]

Have posted here before and had some useful advice so here goes...

DS has never been a great sleeper - it's normal for him to need resettling a couple of times a night, including usually one night feed.

He's now 9.5 months old (corrected for prematurity) and three nights ago suddenly started being awake for 1-2 hours in the middle of the night. He's generally happy - tonight I think he was playing in his cot for at least half an hour before we got up to try to settle him - then he seems to want to just play with us. Very sweet but exhausting!

Is this the 8/9/10 month regression? Could it be anything else? Any idea how long it lasts?!? Any suggestions for what we can do in the meantime?

Have you got some motor developments - crawling, sitting, standing? These often correspond with sleep going rubbish.

You don't mention your settling method, but in-cot settling is going to become increasingly important and for that settling to be increasingly independant - for example baby could be being taught to put own dummy in now.

Mine has started doing this too. I don't engage with any playing in the night. I let her play in her cot til she gets grouchy and then has milk to get back to sleep. I think it's all the new skills she's excited about!

DD1 did this at 8 months when she was learning to stand I think. She used to have a whole awake phase from 1 to 3 am and nothing would get her back to sleep. Fortunately it was only every 3 or 4 nights. I can't remember how long it lasted, maybe a few weeks?

Hang in there!

Thanks all

FATE, settling method is a cuddle and white noise which isn't ideal I know! You've given me advice in the past about self settling which I need to work on. He refuses a dummy which doesn't help. As for motor developments, he's definitely trying to crawl... (And seems to be "talking" more as well)

hello, yep that's what we did last night - tried settling without milk first but he wasn't going down so resorted to "old faithful" bottle and a cuddle!

Chloe, glad it's not just us then!

Fingers crossed its not too many weeks!!