Hi all:
I'll give a little background first...
My ds is 9.5 months and the first 6 months were very difficult with night wakings, short naps, etc. Things are much better now: he goes down for naps with no fussing; goes down for bed with typically no fussing, he will take good naps (albeit not always consistent in length), and has actually had consecutive nights were he has slept through the night (e.g. 7pm-6pm). His naps total about 2.5/2.75 hours per day.
For about the last month, he has been waking at night for 1.5/2 hours and will cry. I'll go to him and rub his back (which is how he calms and relaxes), and he lays there like he's going to sleep, but then sits up. So I lay him back down. Then he'll sit up and I'll lay him back down. If I leave the room, he really cries, then calms down and is quiet for a few minutes, but then he's back to full crying again. He usually only cries when I leave the room, but sometimes will cry even when I'm in there with him. I sometimes give him half a bottle in case he's hungry (although I don't think he is) and he sometimes goes to sleep after it, but usually does not. By the way, when I feed him, it's the only time that I take him out of his crib during these wakings. He'll have 4 or 5 nights of this, then sleep through the night for 1 or 2 nights, then back again to night wakings. We actually had a stretch of sleeping through the night for about 5 or 6 days (just a few weeks ago), but that's the longest stretch ever. He's been night waking now again for about the last 4 nights. Last night he was awake from about 11:30pm-2am.
Our schedule looks like this
--Awake - between 6 and 7am
--Bottle between 7-7:30
--Finger food (rice cake recently) then breakfast between 7:30-8:15 (time does change depending when he had his bottle)
--AM Nap usually between 9:30-9:45. Naps usually about 1.5 hours (sometimes a little more, sometimes less)
--Awake between 10:30-11:30. Bottle upon awakening
--Lunch about 12:00
--PM Nap between 1:30-2:30 (depending when he woke up from his first nap)
--Awake between 3 and 3:45 Bottle upon awakening
-- Dinner at 5pm
-- Bottle, Bath - then in bed between 6:15- 7:00 (depending when he woke up from his PM nap)
I initially thought the night wakings were due to teething because he cut one of his bottom teeth and most recently (within the last week) cut one of his upper front teeth -- but now I'm not so sure if it is teething. I did give him Tempra (acetaminophen) one night before going to bed in case it was teething, but he still had a night waking. Could he be eating too much food to close to bed, since he has two bottles and dinner so close together? I don't know if that's it though because he was sleeping the night with this same eating schedule. I am at a loss as to what the answer is.
Any suggestions/ideas/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!!
Patricia
