Is he crying whilst still asleep?

[drjane]

My 5mo DS often starts crying at night - usually around 9.30-10.30pm (he goes to bed at 8pm) - but when we go in to him his eyes are still closed. He's thrashing around and sounds really upset, but the second you pick him up he is immediately calm and asleep. When you try and put him down again he starts to cry again. When we handle him to much in this state his eyes open and he seems very awake and it's really hard to get him to settle again.

Could he still be asleep, and crying in his sleep? Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what do we do?! It's very hard not to pick him up because he seems so upset, but are we just waking him up? He did this twice last night (10.30 then 2am) and it took an hour to settle him each time (we picked him up both times).

I naively thought that by 5mo his sleep would be starting to 'settle' not getting worse!

DS used to sometimes cry in his sleep like that although I can't quite remember at what age (def under 12 months though). What happens if you leave him altogether, difficult as it is? Does he settle himself and go back to sleep? Or instead of touching him/picking himup, why not just talk soothingly to him to help calm him down?

My son (5mo) also cries in his sleep sometimes. I usually leave him for a couple of minutes and he settles, but there have been times where he hasn't and I've gone in to find him still asleep. I never usually have to pick him up though. I wonder if they are having bad dreams? Why don't you try leaving him for a bit...some babies need to cry a bit to put themselves to sleep. Good luck.

DD 17m still does this. About 50% of the time she will go quiet after 1 - 2 minutes. I can now tell by the cry if she is going to settle or not.

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I tried leaving him for a bit last night, but the crying very quickly escalated, didn't seem he was going to settle...I think that actually rather than being asleep, he's crying but is so tired he's not opening his eyes. He was arching his back and turning on his side - seemed like he was in some sort of pain - he'd quieten down and seem to go back to sleep when I rubbed his back but 5 minutes later he'd be crying again - I must have been in to him at least 10 times last night. I gave in at 5am and brought him into our bed, but he carried on waking up crying, he was just doing it lying next to me!

pelafina - I can totally sympathise...|I know it's early, but might he be cutting a tooth? We had several terrible nights when ds was about 4 months and a tooth popped out!

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Aha - I think it was wind. We've recently started giving him a few solids and I think it was affecting his digestion a bit.

He had a terrible night last night, but I noticed he was falling asleep (albeit briefly!|) after he'd passed wind. In the end he spent most of the night in bed with us - I lay him on his side facing away from me with my arm over him, and when he started to moan/cry I'd rub his belly gently and that seemed to soothe him back to sleep.

He just had a massive poo, and has gone down for nap with very little protest so fingers crossed this episode has passed...

Sounds familiar. Twice this morning my ds (4 months) has started screaming during his nap but settled again almost instantly. I think it's teething in his case as he's dribbling so much and last night wake awake hourly although I do not feed him during the night.

I think my intervention actually disturbs him rather than settles him so I wait outside the door and listen to see if he calms down.

my ds did this a lot when teething (4-6m, quite regular) - we had to actually wake him up properly to get some drugs into him, that would settle him a bit. I noticed he was waking the minute the next dose was due, so a couple times a night. It made dh and I both quite crazy...

My DS was grizzly at 3 months (after sleeping wonderfully for a while), but when I went to check on him he was still sleeping and if I picked him up he would wake up and refuse to settle. Then one time I got there just as he did a big fart and turned over and settled down again. So it may be gas and / or teething.