10 month old waking up more at night

[Liv316]

Our 10mo has never been great at sleeping at night with several wake ups. However the past week or two he has started waking up to which I BF him back to sleep and then say 5-10 minutes later he’s crying again so I go in and settle him trying with a cuddle or rocking him but this doesn’t work and I need to BF again. This can happen a couple of times before he finally settles.

Before he would wake up at night but always with a bigger gap of 2-3 hours so I’m at a loss as to why he’s doing this. Anyone any ideas?

He usually has 2 naps, 9:30am for 2 hours then 2:45pm 30 minute nap.

That's a very short afternoon nap so giving along time awake up to bedtime. This won't be helping. Could you lengthen this nap?

At night, he will sleep better If you develop a wayyoget him back to sleep without feeding. Then he won't need that feed as a sleep association so going back to sleep is easier. Could you work on alternate settling methods?

Following as I could have wrote this myself! You are not alone! Like you our son was never a great sleeper but we were starting to get some good stretches by about 6 months and then it's gone down hill. He has gone from waking up abs just moaning until we came to just crying the moment he is up. Sometimes when we get to him he's sitting up, crying but eyes closed and continues to cry and have eyes closed in our arms. I will have to feed him back to sleep.
He will occasionally be rocked back to sleep by Dad but inevitably he will always need feeding back to sleep.
I have tried alternative ways to get him back to sleep and he just cries and cries which I'm not going to sit and let him do!

@FATEdestiny thanks Fate. So the last few days I’ve tried to switch his morning nap to being shorter and afternoon nap to the longer one.

Yesterday he did 30 mins at 9:30am then 2 hours at 1pm so woke at 3pm which is a great day nap wise in our house. Bed at 7pm but he woke more at night and then he’s been up since 4:45am. Did he have too much sleep yesterday?

Did he have too much sleep yesterday?

Short answer is no.

Until you are well into the toddler years (2 years old plus), you do not ever need to consider under tiredness. More sleep is always better.

It would be perfectly fine, for example, to have a 2h nap in the morning plus a 2h nap in the afternoon (plus 10-12h overnight sleep).

@FATEdestiny ok thank you, do you have any other ideas why? He did the same this morning, woke up at 5:30am and ready to go for the day. Standing up in his cot waiting for us

The fact that he goes to sleep (or nearly asleep) in your arms - breastfeeding, cuddles or rocked - is likely to be the most significant cause of frequent night wakes.

Because baby isn't going to sleep in the cot, when in a light sleep phase of the night baby will find it harder to transition back to deep sleep without first waking up to be in ypur/arms to settle again.

How about teaching baby to go to sleep in the cot?

@FATEdestiny he does go to sleep in the cot when first put down for bed as well as for naps, at night he will protest. So if he wakes and I try and comfort him in the cot, i don’t really get anywhere and he will get more worked up.

Keep working on independant settling for night wakes too. These are always harder work, because the pressure to sleep is less having just woken up.