7 month old wakes at 2am to play

[MariettevV]

My 7 month old use to be such a good sleeper, slept for 11 - 12 hours every night. Recently however he started waking at 2am. He doesn't cry, he just plays around in his cot, sitting up and rolling around. I then sit with him for about an hour to calm him (he is super excited sometimes) and get him back to sleep. It then takes me forever to get back to sleep. Please help, how can I get him to stay asleep or not take so long to fall back to sleep. He is usually in bed by 20h45 latest and usually wakes at 8am, this morning however he was up before 7am plus between 2am - 3am. PLEASE HELP, I'm super desperate

[Kellyjs]

Hi Mariette,

Welcome to BW! It's horrible when they do that isn't it? A few questions if I may... Is it always 2am that he wakes? Is he always happy when he wakes?

Could you possibly post your day for me is easy format to see if anything jumps out? So ideally it would look like this (obviously add your own times in  )

Wu 8
E 8.15
A
S 11-?? Etc etc

I know what you mean about it taking sooo long to get back to sleep, I have that too. DH on the other hand can fall asleep straight away and it really irritates me! 

[MariettevV]

Hi Kelly,

Thank you so much for getting back to me, I'm new at the forum thing, joined this one out of pure desperation!
His days use to be so predictable, it went like this:
Wake @ 8
Porridge @ 8.15
Bottle @ 10
Nap @ 11 - anything between 1.3 - 2.3 hours
Lunch @ 12.30 / 1.30 - depending on wake time
Bottle @ 14.30 / 15.30 - depending on lunch time
Nap @ 16 - anything between 1 - 2 hours
Dinner @ 17.30 / 18.00 latest
Sleep @ 20.30 / 20.45 latest

This is what his days use to look like, now everything is out of whack. Last night for example he was awake at 2.35 and again at 5, at 5 he only fell asleep again at 6 then woke again at 7.15 at which time I was so exhausted trying to put him to sleep that we just got up and started our day.

He always wakes up happy, sometimes I don't even hear him, I only find out he is awake when I was the camera in his room to see him happily playing about in his cot (so who knows what time he actually woke). I put him down, he jumps right up again, eventually I just sit next to the cot with a firm hand on his chest until he (sometimes after am hour) calms down and falls asleep again. I never engage in any conversation with him and I try to keep things as calm and low key as possible.

He use to have a dummy only for sleeping (I took it away about two weeks ago) last night out of desperation I tried giving the dummy back, he just spat it out and continued blabbing.
 
O and he sleeps with white noise, has been since he was born.

So in general he is such a happy baby, hardly ever cries, I would say he was an angel baby that has now turned into who knows what? Due to his disrupted nights, he is cranky in the day (me too if I'm honest).

Thanks again for replying, it really means the world to me :-)

(Sorry, I am new to this so I don't know most of the abbreviations used)

[MariettevV]

Sorry Kelly, I forgot... He has another bottle before going to bed. O and he only gets expressed breast milk (not sure of that makes a difference or matters to my drama)

[dache]

Hi  MariettevV
My lo is the same age,and Im also trying to figure out night wakings and early wakings.
From what I`ve seen around I can tell you that it seems he is having too much day sleep. The first nap should be 2h and the second around 1. Also the wu form the final nap should be at least 3h before bt. So if bt is 8.30 he should get up from his nap no later then 5.30.
Hope your nights get better soon

[MariettevV]

Hi Dache,

Thank you for your reply!
Today even his naps are bad, he went down at 11.10 and woke at 11.50, so only 40minutes. I will try putting him down earlier and waking him at 17.30 if he is still asleep. I have even contemplated cutting the 2nd nap completely.

[dache]

I have too. But I looked at this From 2 to 1 nap transition (10-12m and older)
She is not ready for 2-1 transition.
Our morning nap was short too, woke up at 30 minutes, I gave her the paci and went back to sleep for 15 more minutes (I think)
I left her in the cot for 30minutes more until she started crying. She is now down for a nap after 3 1/2 h of A

Last night was a little better tough.
Her naps were very short during the day so last bottle at 5.30, bt by 6. wu at 9 for a bottle.Then she woke up at 2 and went back to sleep after repluging the paci. Then woke up at 4.20 and I fed her because that was the longest she had gone without the feed. She sitll woke up at 5.30 though  but also want back easy with the paci and slept until 7.
I think Im going to try an earlier bt tonight too, maybe 6.30 to see if that makes a difference.

[Kellyjs]

Hi Mariette,

Don't worry, after a few weeks on here, you'll know all the abbreviations! There is a list in the introduction section of the website if you get stuck whilst reading other posts.

Dache has given you some great advice here. I would consider pushing that first A by 15mins as that sounds like a classic UT (under tired) nap of 40mins. This could be what all the NW's (night wakings)/cot parties are all about in the night. Mine used to do that too around this age as she was ready for a good jump in A.

I would try and aim for around 3-3hrs 15 mins of daytime sleep max tbh. Any more and I think you'll be robbing him of his night sleep.

I think try and concentrate on that first nap firstly. I'd extend by 15mins and hold for about 3 days to see if that helps. I'd keep the second nap at about the same A time as you were doing previously for now. If you get an UT nap there, we could always look at extending that A too.

As Dache mentioned, it may not be quite time for the 2-1 transition yet, but as you can see in that link she posted the day can get a bit long when the A times increase. Then we'd have to look at chopping down one of the naps further. But as he's used to so much day sleep atm I would try and keep or aim for 1.5hr naps x 2 and see if you can keep that for a couple of months.

What do you think?

[MariettevV]

Hi again,

Thanks for all the input, it sure can be overwhelming to be a first time mom! My son has been such an angel up to now so this is completely strange for me.
I'm a bit of a control freak so I take note of all his naps / food / milk / sleep / etc and I've noticed that since his night sleep has been so disturbed his naps are completely messed up or rather not so consistent as they use to be... I had this down to been overtired because he is not sleeping enough at night.

I stretched him from 11.50 to 15.30 then put him down, it was up and down for 20min after which he eventually passed out, slept for 40min and woke again, I went back in to put him down, amazingly he stayed down and is now sleeping again, if he is still asleep, I'll wake him at 17.30 (he has only had 40min so fat for the day so thought if he sleeps I must leave him for longer than an hour?).

I'll try extending the awake times and hopefully everything will sort itself out? Can all of this been down to increase mobility? Him kind off thinking... Oh I can sit up by myself and move around so I don't have to lie down in my bed or is that just silly?

I pray that I'll have my angel baby back soon cause this mommy needs some sleep :-(

[Kellyjs]

Developmental stuff can play havoc with sleep.. Crawling etc... They seem to like to practise in the early hours 

If they are tired enough, they will go down for a nap and not play around so much. It's just a case of timing it right. As I said, there's a huge developmental leap around now, so it normally calls for a nice increase in A. Once that's all sorted, hopefully your nights will too. It might take a few day or even weeks to find the correct timings for him again though. But you should start to see an improvement within a week or so I'd say? X

[MariettevV]

Practice at night is fun for them but not so fun for mom...

Let's hope it's all just a timing issue and that he'll soon be exhausted whenever it's time to sleep!

Thanks again for all the advice