almost 3 and still doesnt sleep through

[*Jo*]

I posted a while back that master Asher was up all night screaming and we thankfully no longer have that, however we do still have multiple nightwakings. sometimes they are short and i just tell him to lay down. other times it can take about 10mins. he wakes up as though he is not fully awake and is slurring his words etc, like hes still asleep but hes not. its not a night terror as my eldest used to have those and i can tell the difference.
He has never slept through really. he can put himself to sleep every single night but everytime he wakes up in the night he requires some sort of assistance. 3 years of broken sleep is taking its toll. it baffles me as my other two were sleep trained from here and theyve slept perfectly for years! I couldnt do any major sleep training with Asher as he has had severe asthma all his life (hosptilised 10 times in his first year!)
Is this ever going to end or is this so ingrained in him that im forever going to be running up the stairs 2 or 3 times a night ??
I must say, he does sleep through the night maybe once a week at least, sometimes twice a week, so it does happen, just not consistently.
what can i do to make a nearly three year old sleep through??

[Katet]

he wakes up as though he is not fully awake and is slurring his words etc, like hes still asleep but hes not. its not a night terror as my eldest used to have those and i can tell the difference.

Actually it may well be a night terror just not the same as your other son, as night terrors can be really different with different children. The main part is they don't remember it in the morning.

My DS1 had horrid Asthma at night until he was about 7yo. What I have noticed more recent years is that if he moans in his sleep he settles with ventolin, now that's a more recent thing that I've discovered & it's really only April/May Sept/Oct that it happens AND if I don't give him ventolin chances are he is unsettled the rest of the night & wheezy the next day. DS1 was a really poor sleeper until about 4yo when he went onto an asthma preventer, which helped, but when his sleep really improved was when his adenoids came out & he had grommits as what was causing him to be unsettled was fluid in the ears even though he's not had a single ear infection in his life.

So rather than think about it being sleep training that isn't working, I'd be trying to see if there is a medical issue there, enlarged adenoids, glue ear (which GP's are actually not great at picking up without ear infections)  & sleep apnea - mostly it's thought this is when children are noisy sleepers or you can notice them stop breathing, but sometimes it isn't that noticable as they appear to breath normally, but have really wakeful sleep etc. I know when we were talking to the ENT with DS1's issues he commented that all his poor sleep as a toddler probably went back to more medical reasons... we know he  also had mild sleep apnea, but he had some orthodontics done at 9yo & that helped that too... basically his his asthma & glue ear were tied in with his narrow palate & jaw issues (not sure if the breathing caused it or the breathing was a result of it) & medical & orthodontic intervention made a huge difference to his overall sleep.