My DS is nearly 11 months old and we’ve been lucky that he’s always been a good sleeper until now. He self settles for naps and for night sleep in his cot with a muslin. Up until recently he had been sleeping through unless he was teething or poorly. Over the last month he has started waking during the night and being awake for up to 4 hours absolutely inconsolable. This happened occasionally at first, he was poorly and had teeth coming through, but now it’s started happening more nights than not despite him being well again and his teeth have now emerged. He cries and cries and the only thing that seems to soothe him is walking around the room rocking him which I am doing for 1 hour +. He will eventually fall asleep in my arms like that but will then wake about 10 mins later and the process starts again :( it’s usually around 3-4 hours where he’s finally properly asleep again then he’ll wake at 7ish. Last night for example I hadn’t yet nodded off when he woke crying at 23:30 and it was 03:15 when he went back to sleep. He won’t settle at all for DH, and he works nights so isn’t here a lot of the time when it’s happening anyway. He is still self settling at bedtime and for naps so I’m not sure why this is happening but I’m exhausted, he is 21lb and I am tiny and quite weak physically and rocking him for hours at night is really taking its toll on me and even on the nights that he does sleep well I find I can’t sleep because it’s like I’m just waiting for him to wake crying. He isn’t too hot or cold, he isn’t hungry because I do offer him a bottle, I change his nappy but it doesn’t help. I have tried cuddling him but not rocking, sitting on the edge of the bed instead of standing, standing over his cot and shhing/patting/stroking, co-sleeping but this seems to wind him up more. Other than walking round the room rocking him there is nothing else I seem to be able to do and I can’t leave him to cry because it would break my heart, but I can’t continue with the rocking because I have such a bad back.
He naps twice a day, morning for about an hour and afternoon for about 1.5 hours. On the nights where he sleeps through there is literally nothing that has changed in comparison to the nights where he’s awake for hours. Is this just a phase that we need to ride out? Does anyone have any advice on how I might be able to calm him without the walking around and rocking?