eight months and too busy to sleep... advice please.

[AuntieTowie]

Up to now I've happily bf'd my 8mo ds to sleep and got up to him once or twice a night. I'm happy to carry on doing that but just it seems not to be working because, even though he's visibly tired (yawning, ear pulling, more likely to fall over when crawling), he's not falling asleep when I feed him. For the last few nights when I leave him he's been standing up in his cot looking around instead of being put down asleep or close to sleep as he always has been. Stroking his back or similar has no effect at all. If I leave the room he cries hard, on and off, for up to 20/25 minutes before falling asleep. If I go back to stroke his back etc in controlled crying style he gets more worked up than he was before. Any similar experiences, and how to deal with it please

Umm the ear pulling thing gives it away really, he's teething! Have a look in his mouth for signs of redness. Give the poor love some teething gel or some Calpol and see if it helps. It will pass.

That makes sense. He already has six teeth so you'd think I'd be able to recognise it by now. Cheers for that!

My ds is now 9 mths and used to settle himself to sleep really well, but not at the moment

He's been teething too, which hasn't helped, but also, I think it's the novelty of being mobile too.

Now he can stand up in the cot, crawl around etc, he's finding it more difficult to switch off and go to sleep too.

I hope it's just a phase.......

Jojay - yes they do get unsettled when they start moving around too! Nothing you can do I'm afraid. It does calm down although DD has now learned to escape her cotbed so we just cross our fingers that she doesn't get into too much mayhem these days (she's nearly 11 months!)