Wide awake in the middle of the night?

[holz]

My 8.5 month old has been pretty consistently over the last few weeks waking up around 5am in what we call his "mischief mode"- almost hyper, grabbing and pinching and maneuvering his body so he can kick me or DH- and staying that way for about an hour before falling back to sleep. Then he'll sleep from 6 to around 7:30.

He's not ready to start his day- I've tried bringing him downstairs and starting our morning routine, but he won't have it.

This is not his only wake-up... He usually goes to sleep between 7 and 8, wakes up between 10 and 11, and then again around 2:30am.

I think I was engaging him too much, trying to nurse him and get him back to sleep, so I've started just rolling away from him, letting him kick me, talk, etc., and then rolling back over to comfort him when he starts fussing, but it's still taking about an hour before he'll settle down enough to go back to sleep.

Any thoughts or ideas, or even BTDT? I've never had a problem with him not STTN, friends are always shocked when I mention that he still wakes at night but I know it's to be expected and it truly hasn't bothered me, because he's always been very good about eating and going right back to sleep, but this is driving me nuts- especially since I feel like I'm getting beaten up!

[nm7300]

We had this issue around the same age! I basically just started continuously lying him back down and offering to nurse every time he sat up. (We also have a no-talking, no-lights rule at night that we continued to enforce.) Eventually, he stopped doing this & now just wakes up in the morning at his normal time. I don't know if our actions helped, but either way, it didn't last too long! Good luck.