play in the middle of the night

[sa]

my nearly 7 month old DS sleeps from 8pm. for the past few weeks, he wakes in the middle of the night around 3am to play for 1 to 2 hours. we ignore him. half of the time he will fall back to sleep on his own.

my DH keeps telling me i should keep DS up later so he will sleep till morning without waking up.

i think his day time sleep is ok. 2 long naps - 1.5 hour in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon.

i am starting to doubt if i should put him to bed so early and wish he will sleep till 7am without waking in the middle of the night ??!

[Holly n Harvie]

Maybe try the cat nap in the early evening before the last feed and bath time? I have done that with my Harvie and he generally sleeps through till 7 am. He may wake to play for 10 mins around 5 am, but he puts himself back to sleep. I am no expert, maybe try it.

[sa]

hi, thanks for your reply. how old is your lo?

dropped DS catnap since 5 month old. he was fighting really hard of it.
only time he would have his catnap is when one of his other nap was shorten. few days ago he had a catnap and he woke for 2 hours to play at night 

my DH even said baby doesn't need so much sleep at night??

i am really starting to loose "faith" here .......   :?

[Holly n Harvie]

No kidding, I bet you are. Well Harvie is only 3 months at the moment. When they are at this age they are still expected to have a night feed still in some babies. Harvie though is sleeping through. He is a good weight though. 6.5 kg. His body weight can sustain him through the night. (I also put a teaspoon of rice cereal in his 'dream feed' bottle at 10 pm.)

Babies your lo's age should sleep 10 to 12 hours a night. I follow the E.A.S.Y (Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your time) plan laid out in Tracy's book and it seems to work a charm.

[SandyGal]

I doubt that a later bed time will help. Tired babies sleep worse than well rested ones. What is going on developmentally? What is happening on the nights that he doesn't go back to sleep on his own?

[sa]

DS didn't take an oz from his DF for a few days, so i dropped his DF for the past 2 nights. surprisingly, he doesn't wake in the middle of the night to play anymore. and he wakes at 7am for 2 days.

is it too early to drop DF at 7 months? he is on 3 solids, plus 4 bottles (mostly not finished) in the day.

[jessica and emilys mummy]

Hi.I think that dropping the DF is okay.It may be the DF is causing some heaviness and keeping him awake.We had this with dd#2 but she used to be really constipated until we dropped the DF at about 6.5 months.
Keep it up for about a week and see how it goes.If you think he may get too hungry mash some banana about 6ish.
Take care
Sarah