PLing is killing what little sleep we get

[penstamon]

DS1 just turned 2 and has been PLing on and off for a few months.  Lately he has been waking, sometimes for up to 2 hours, because he wants to go potty and then wants a clean diaper.  He does go pee about 50% of the time but it could be after 3 tries in a 2 hour period.  Last night he was up 4 times including a 2 hour period.  I maybe slept 4 broken hours between the two DS's!

He has always been a frequent waker but this is making everything worse!  He tends to wake more when he's working through a new milestone and he is currently learning the alphabet in addition to PLing.  Funny thing is, right now he just pooped in his diaper and hasn't said a word about it.  But at night he is ultra-sensitive about a little pee (and he wants to recite his ABC's).

DS2 is almost 3 months so we deal with 2-3 wakings/night from him and it doesn't help that DS1 is waking him up too.  Any advice for dealing with nighttime PLing?

[lifeguard]

Have you tried preemptively waking him up? I know many mamas have success with nighttime dryness by waking dc up just before they go to bed later in the evening & bringing them to the potty. Some people find dc doesn't even really need to wake up completely but can pee & go back to bed still mostly asleep.

I suspect it will get better fairly quickly on it's own because new things do tend to temporarily mess with their sleep & once he absorbs it all he'll start sleeping better again.