10 month old long night wakings - please help!

[Upstairsdownstairs30]

Hello mumsnetters!

I am really hoping that someone can help me as I am at my witts end with my babies sleep:

Baby is currently 10 months old and will wake around 11.30 where he normally easily settled and sometime between 3am and 5am where he will take between an hour and 2 hours to get back to sleep Whilst this is a vast improvement on multiple wakings this still doesn't give me a huge amount of unbroken sleep so would really appreciate any advice!! All of my friends babies are sleeping through so I feel like I must be doing something wrong with him!

Typical day will involve:

-wake at 7am (sometimes later if we have had a bad night but I am trying to keep this consistent).
-We are trying to transition to one nap but sometimes he will have a short sleep around 10am. (Used to be earlier but he is not ready, hence trying the 1 nap transition)
-Then he will nap for around 1.30-2 hours from 11.30 (we are trying to lush this back slowly) or more around 1ish if he does nap in the morning. This will usually take him to bedtime

• if we are out and about sometimes he will have a short catnap in the car but I will not allow him to sleep later than 4 and he generally won't have this if he's had a morning nap.

Additional info:

• bedtime will be around 7/8 depending on how tired he is and how late he has slept
• bedtime routine is bath, story, sometimes a little play if he is still full of beans, boob and put down in his cot for sleep
• he will normally roll around in his cot and sometimes fuss/ cry a bit and then will go to sleep- sometimes this can take a while sometimes ten minutes
• he is breastfed and is normally fed to sleep for his naps
• if he wakes in the night out he will not accept no milk from me so is eventually fed back to sleep after I've tried other alternatives
• if dad does the night time wake up he will walk around till he sleeps on the shoulder

His routine is quite lose as we have different groups at different times on each day e.g singing on a Monday at 10.30 so he will sleep in the Pram and are making the most of it whenever we are asked to go out!

Please be brutal with the routine I am absolutely shattered and it's affecting my relationship and enjoyment of the baby!

I should add he is an excellent eater! He will have 3 big meals a day plus snacks and a couple of milk feeds if he wants them.

Bump

My DD seems to go through these split night wakings when something developmental is happening, she's 13 months and it's happening again right now! She's having real explosion with her language and has seemed on the verge of walking for ages do I think that's a lot go do with it. Probably just a phase we have to ride out I think?

I think 10 month olds are normally on 2 naps a day, how come you are moving to 1? Could she be overtired? Certainly i wouldn't let ant sleep after 3pm at that age...

I’m also surprised on one nap a day, I would try two. Being awake from 1.30ish until 7 is really long at that age. My son is nearly two years old and naps 12.30-1.45 ish and is ready for bed by 7.45/8 most nights. Can’t quite remember what he was doing at 10 months but think he was probably waking 6ish and then napping by 9.30 for an hour or so, then maybe napping again around 2. Bedtime 8ish.

I’m also surprised at the 1 nap - my DD is 16.5 months and only just dropped to 1 nap (still naps twice some days!). I think he sounds overtired, that can cause night wakings.

At 10 months my DD was waking between 6-7 and first nap was at 9:30 and second nap at 2/2:30 then bed at 7:30.

I've 3dc (youngest 6m) and seriously yours is still a baby. For the sake of an easy life if I were you I'd let them dictate the "routine".

If feeding back to sleep is what works for them just do it. Night feeds for bf babies shouldn't stop until around 18m unless the baby doesn't want them anymore. I'm sorry to say that both my older 2 fed a couple of times a night past the age of 2 (we coslept which made that easy).

I'm surprised that you're trying to drop to 1 nap. What's driving that?

Unless there was something pressing I let mine sleep/nap when they wanted and most days that followed a similar pattern. Maybe let your little one do that for a couple of weeks and see what she needs rather than what you want.

And she doesn't need baby groups yet (though they're probably good for you)

I'm going to go against the grain, my DD dropped to one nap early too. No way in hell would she nap 2-3 hours after waking, not since she was much smaller, so we got to the point where 2 naps needed so much time in between that bedtime would be ridiculously late. She was having the split night issue before that and it stopped for a few weeks afterwards so it wasn't the cause.

Is there any reason you’ve transitioned to one nap? Most babies have two naps a day until at least a year, often longer.

My baby is nearly 10 months and currently has a morning and an afternoon nap, each about 90 mins long.

I wonder if pushing for one nap means your baby is very overtired and therefore not getting settled into a good overnight sleep?

@Upstairsdownstairs30

I should add he is an excellent eater! He will have 3 big meals a day plus snacks and a couple of milk feeds if he wants them.

I would also say just as an aside that he should be having milk consistently every day as that’s where babies get most of their nutrients from until they’re one. At 10 months snacks shouldn’t be replacing milk feeds; he should always be having the milk, and then snacks on top of that if he wants them.

My boy is 8 months, but does the split nights whenever he hasn't napped for long enough in the day...I'd first try increasing his daytime naps to see if that makes any difference!

Thanks for the replies - sorry I didn't get an alert that there were any!

Not sure how to reply to all of these individually...

The point about development is really interesting! He has just this week taken his first steps and seems to be starting to learn some words so hopefully it's that!

The split night issue started before I tried for one nap so not sure that's what's causing it. The reason why I am trying to change to one is because he is in no way ready for a nap 2-3 hours after waking, so if he two naps it makes bedtime ridiculously late.

His one nap will be approx 2 hours long though?! I read the average time for dropping to one is somewhere between 10-18 months so although he is on the earlier side for this j thought he might be ready. I can try and carry on with two though and see if that makes a difference though.

And regarding his food, he always has milk morning and evening but not necessarily always throughout the day. He is fed on demand so can have it if he wants it but seems to be losing interest!

What happens if you try feeding him first before trying to settle him without milk?