10 month old 1-3 hours NWs

[MiasMama]

Hi,

my DS is 10 months. He is having trouble with NWs. He was able to sleep through the night 7pm-7am for a week or so and now is up 1-2hours at night anywhere between 1am and 3am. It's awful. Nursing him doesn't help as he pulls off and cries. It takes him a long time to work himself up. Like an hour or so sometimes. He'll cry intermittently, like every 5-7 minutes but will never go all the way back to sleep. He's teething and has been for months most of the time. He's very sensitive to tooth pain. He nurses about 4 times during the day. He's also down to 1 nap. We moved him to one nap and he adjusted easily and usually sleeps 2-3 hours daily. Half the time not he's up at 5:30am crying off and on too!

Sample schedule:

5:30am: cry off and on until 6:30am
6:30am: awake and BF
8AM: Solids
10:30am: BF
11AM: Solids
11:30am: Down for nap
2:30pm: up from nap and BF
4:30PM: Solids
6:45pm: down for the night
9pm: will sometimes cry but puts himself back to sleep
1am-3am: cry off and on for an hour or so until he works himself up; my husband will go in after a while (maybe an hour - it's varied because we are so stumped) and give him meds, or let him know it's not time to wake up, etc. and eventually he'll go back down but it hasn't been a consistent reason why.

We'd love some insight into this! It's been going on for a month or so. He's also teething, pulling himself up on things, crawling with his belly off the floor and climbing stairs.

[jessmum46]

It could well be a developmental thing with everything he has going on, there's so much happening in their little brains at this age!  And teeth/discomfort always used to cause long unsettled wakings for us at about that time of night.  But I also wonder - why did you decide to change him to one nap?  It's not unheard of at this age certainly, but he is rather young for it and I wonder if perhaps some of the root cause is over tiredness?  5.30-11.30 is a long stretch for such a little one, and sometimes that leads them to crash into a long nap which although it looks good, can mean they aren't as rested as you might expect.  Just as a 'test' (of sorts) - if you head out in the car mid-morning does he tend to fall asleep quite easily?  If so, you may want to consider going back to a 2 nap routine for a little while, even if that's just a quick morning catnap and then a longer nap after lunch?