Night Parties for 11 month old

[sycorrell]

My daughter is 11.5 months old.  She has always been a good night sleeper - usually if she woke up at night, she quickly put herself back to sleep.  For the past 2 weeks, she has been waking up in the middle of the night and staying awake for an hour or more.  She is not crying - in fact, sometimes she is laughing!  She talks to her mobile animals, chats to herself, etc.  After 45 minutes or so, I usually go into her room, pat her stomach and tell her it is time to go back to sleep and most of the time that gets her to go back to sleep.  She does not seem to be teething.  I always check to be sure she is not wet or feverish and almost never is.  It does not seem to be impacting her during the day - she has not been excessively cranky or tired.

I am concerned about going in there every night - that she will become reliant on me to get back to sleep.  Should I just let her go?  The problem for me is that I cannot sleep while she is still awake so it is killing my sleep these days!!  Any ideas???

[Katet]

Sounds like her day time routine needs tweeking as she is not tired enough to need the "full nights" sleep.

Can you post her day routine & I can give some ideas

[zelkad]

Wow...we should get our lo's together so they can party.  Our guy is 11 months and about 3 times a week for the past two weeks or so he's been partying too.  I don't go in because that would be worse (in our situation)  He jumps, laughs, etc.  Like yours, he doesn't cry.  Our son will do this for about 15 minutes or so and then that's it.  I know what you mean though about not being able to sleep through it.....dh has no problem though!

Anyhow, yes, I would look at her daytime sleep.  If she is getting too much or maybe not enough activity time, the perhaps that could be tweaked as Katet suggested.  Our son, however, has two naps totalling 2 1/2 hours usually and he's on the go all day.  He's also a 7 to 7 sleeper so I'm going to assume this is a phase. 

What would happen if you didn't go in to settle her....would she fall back on her own?  I'm sure that if this did go on for a long time then she would need you to repeat this strategy every night.   Yes, I know that sleeping through this is impossible but I think leaving her is the best bet if she's content.  But that's just what I think. 

Also, has she started crawling, walking, pulling up, etc lately?  I read somewhere in Tracy's book that babies at these stages wake with muscle spasms that they can't control and therefore party for a bit.   HTH

Zelka