The 4am play hour (or two + hours)

[penstamon]

I didn't think that DS's sleep could get worse , but here we are. At 7.5 mo, he is awake every 45min- 2 hours all night long. Which would be OK compared to the last 2 weeks of waking around 4am to play, talk, roll around, etc. and then start crying madly when we try to get him back to sleep. Today it was from 3:50-6:15, so DH never got back to sleep before leaving for work. DS is so exhausted that he'll go down for a nap an hour after getting up each day. It is soooo frustrating!

Yes, we have tried all the usual sleep tools, we cosleep, he bf's on demand, I've tried food elimination, we go to CST 2x a week for silent reflux and torticollis, both of which are improving with no improvement in sleep.

I have read about the 8 month sleep regression and I heard all about it at 4 months too, but by definition don't we have to regress from something and then progress later? ARRRGGHHH!

How do you deal with hours of awake time every morning? Does it ever end?

[ms.shell]

s, mama.
My baby has always done this, too. He passes out for the night around dark (or earlier) and then wants up and to play sometime around 5. Or that is how its been most of his life; lately the wake up has gotten earlier. Today it was 3:30 am and he was ready to start his day.
I don't know how ap this is, but then if I had to get up at 4 am to start my day every day, I can guarantee you i wouldn't be very ap at all. My baby is older than yours, 11 mos, but this is what i do:
we do cosleep, but he also has "his" room, where his toys are. There is also a small tv in there, it isnt really for the baby...we put it in his room before he was born, because i didnt want to put the tv in my older sons room but dad felt he should have access to one for occasionally. Anyway, when baby wakes up at 4 or whenever, I put him in his room to play. I usually do turn the tv on; Sesame Street comes on at 4 am, lol. I put the baby gate on his door so he has to stay in his room, which is completely child proof and safe, and i go back to bed. He will usually play nearly 2 hours before coming to the gate and calling for me. Like i said, i know this isnt exactly ap, but this mama is not able to get up that early and baby is safe and happy in his room, so it works for us.
good luck!

[Louisep]

Ms.shell - that is genius! Our ds has middle of the night playtime 3-5 times a week. If it's middle of the night, I try to ignore him and doze (we cosleep and he's not crying) but last night it was between 8-10pm (he crashes early). I tried in vain to get him back to sleep and wish I'd just let him get up bc I wasted my evening getting frustrated.

Op, ds has been doing this for months even back when he woke every 1-2 hours. The good news is that now when he's up playing, we'll get longer stretches. Eg last night after being awake he slept 10pm-3am and then again until 6:30am. He seems fine today too. At your LO's age, ds would take his first nap 1-2 hours after waking and I think that's fairly common.

[maptome]

My baby is almost the same age as yours (born July 21) and she does almost the exact same thing. She's practices crawling at 4 am. I just continue "sleeping" next to her for half and hour to and hour and nurse her back to sleep when I think she'll do it. I think she knows that she's not supposed to do that because she's strangely quiet but definitely awake. I don't know if that's much of a solution for you...

Just wanted to tell you that I feel the same way. We went through the 4 month sleep regression and it has only gotten worse since then! Waking every 45 min -2.5 hours. I was just venting to DH last night something along the lines of ..."when's the progress." I can't imagine it getting worse. Another regression? Scary.

[odoole]

Mine is about the same age and doing the same thing. I don't even bother trying to put him back to sleep because there's no way it's going to happen.

If he's happy I say just let him play. I know it's hard to be restful when the kiddo's making noise, but do your best.

Even though it's exhausting, I take heart knowing that he's doing some very important learning during those play sessions. For us, it seems like he spends at least one night or two on each new consonant he's working on. So I figure we've got at least 21 - 42 more days of this! But after that night, that new consonant is in his babbling vocabulary. Same goes for the motor skills he's working on.

The thing is, I run so many errands during the day and keep us so busy, I think he often needs those couple hours at night to focus on himself and his new skills.