help, my EASY just went wrong

[chirojaz]

For the past week my EASY has gotten a bit wonky.  My DS is 7.5 months and about a week ago for the first time he slept through the night two nights in a row and then things changed.  Now we are having NW's around 4:30 or 5:00am and he won't resettle unless I rock him to sleep (which I don't want to be doing).  He puts himself to sleep but takes a pacifier.  Also in the past week he has gone from 11+ hours of night sleep to 10hours! He has been up around 6am unless I rock him back to sleep which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. He has a long A time which increased incrementally around 6/6.5 months old.

Yesterday looked like this:

woke 5:50, rocked him back to sleep, up at 6:45
E 7:00 breastfeed
E 8:00 solids
A
S 9:45 (took nap in the car on our way home from a weekend away)
up 11:00
E 11:45 breastfeed
E 12:30 solids
A
S 2:40 (woke after 30min, rocked back to sleep)
up 4:00
E 4:30 breastfeed
E 6:15 solids
E 7:15 breastfeed
S 7:40 (had a hard time falling asleep, had to resettle)
S 8:00

Today looked like this

up 6:00 (tried to get him back to sleep, maybe fell asleep til 6:15?)
E 7:00 breastfeed
E 8:00 solids -fruit and grain
A
S 9:15
up 9:55 then I rocked him back to sleep,
up 10:40
E 11:30 breastfeed
E 12:30 solids
A
S 2:30
up 3:55 (woke up crying)
E 4:15 breastfeed
E 6:15 solids
E 7:00 breastfeed
S  7:30
Dreamfeed 10:30/11ish
Night wake 4:30/5am ish

Some background info….he does not have any teeth yet but he frequently rubs his tongue against his bottom gums and lately has been making a sucking/clicking noise frequently so not sure if he is teething, nothing is popping through.  Also, he has been trying to crawl lately.
I just really want him to sleep through the night, I am getting so exhausted because when he has his night wake I usually can't fall back asleep   I think he might be a touch baby.  Since he has slept through the night a few times I am not feeding him during the night wakings.

[nevinsmama]

HI there! How long has he been on these A times? Wondering if he is due for a 15 minute increase? I would watch that A before BT and when logistically possible keep it no more than your first A of the day. Some do better with less A to BT.

I found, that even when my DS would STTN around this age ( with a DF) that sometimes he would still need another feed later on. Maybe not nutritionally speaking, but I would  save a  feed for that early morning wake in the hopes that it would knock him back out for a while. It usually did.

I wonder if the rocking is becoming a prop as well. Does he go for naps independently? I would look at doing some shh/pat for those wakings in hopes for having him self-settle a bit more. What do you think?

[chirojaz]

He has probably been on this A time for maybe about a month?  I already feel like with his current A time is long and hard to fit two solid naps in but I know that he is too young to even think about 1 nap.  I have been trying to keep is morning A time as short as I can (with him taking at least a 1 hr nap) so that he can get a nap in and then I can take him and my daughter out for the afternoon before she takes her nap.  It's hard juggling both kids naps!
How much daytime sleep is "necessary?" Because if I try and increase his A time his naps will get pushed out and I don't want to be putting him to bed any later than 8pm.  He is already getting two naps which are both less than 1.5 hours.  I am often waking him from naps to get out of the house in the am with him and DD.
I had been feeding him at the 4:30/5 am wake ups and yes he would go back to sleep but as soon as he started STTN I decided not to offer it to him even on the nights he wakes up earlier because I don't want that to become a sleep prop. 
You may be right about the rocking him to sleep becoming a prop, but I also think that if his schedule was where it needed to be I wouldn't be needing to rock him, right?  He started putting himself to sleep independently (with the use of a paci) when he was 4 months old.  But it seems like now when I do his nap time routine he ends up falling asleep while I am still singing to him (which is only one song).  Bedtime he is always usually awake when I lay him down.
So in your opinion do you think the 10 hours of night sleep might be an under tired thing or a overtired thing?

[chirojaz]

Just curious, I can't remember if I did this with my DD but was wondering would A times change when activity level increases? My DS is just starting to move more, almost fully crawling, he gets around a lot in his own crawling style so I was curious could he be getting more tired with this increase of activity and need less A time or does it not work like that?