Aargh! How to get him to sleep again

[shell96]

My DS is 11 months and has always been a good sleeper. He slept right through from 7 weeks and apart from a blip at around 6 months when he started waking in the night (we realised he was hungry put him on 3 solid meals a day and its been fine since then) we havent really had any sleep problems with him. Until last week...

We have a good bedtime routine, bath, feed, put him in his cot awake to self settle and he would then be fine until morning. We would occasionally hear him in the night or early in the morning but he would just chatter to himself, play with his toys, etc until he went back to sleep or we get up.

Since last week though he has learnt to stand up in his cot pulling up on the bars and now everything is a disaster! Now whenever he is put in his cot, during the day for nap, at bedtime or if he wakes in the night he pulls himself upright and cries. The problem is he cant get back down from standing so we have to go and get him so he now knows if he cries we will go to him.

The thing is though, there is absolutely nothing really wrong with him - as soon as I go to him, lie him down and sit beside his cot he quiets immediately and will go off to sleep though he often pops up as he dozes off to check I am still there. He is not even happy with his dad being there - it has to be me. He has also got particularly clingy to me during the day recently too.

I am hoping he will soon learn how to sit down from standing in which case we will be able to leave him to settle down himself but in the meantime I can see him getting into a pattern and learning to manipulate us and I dont want to get into that as it will be harder to break in the long run.

I am considering getting two way baby monitors so I can try and hush him if he stirs in the night without having to get up but it seems a bit of an unnecessary expense as he was so good before.

Anyone got any suggestions? Is it just a clingy phase?

[Masalamama]

The same thing happened with ours at 11 months and the only thing that would send her straight back to solid sleep was a bottle of milk and she drank loads (like 12-14ozs). The HV was horrified but after two weeks it just stopped and her weight had shot up so I'm guessing she had a growth spurt? Good luck.