Help! Baby waking up in the night and wants to play for hours!

[Heavenly]

The last two nights my little one (10 months) has been waking around 2-3 am and wanting to stay awake to play. We don't co-sleep per se but sort of. She has a twin mattress in her room and I am with her part of the time. Anyways the last two nights when she has done this I lay there ignoring her, pretending to be asleep but she just crawls all over, babbling away. At one point I tried to make her lay down but that didn't end well. She doesn't want to nurse she just wants to play. I have two other kids and I have to be up during the day so what am I supposed to do? I can't handle being awake for hours in the middle of the night. Last night she woke at 3:30 am and was awake until 6:30 am when I woke my DH and made him take her upstairs. She ended up staying awake from 3:30 am until 9:15 am! DH brought her to me then and I put her down for a nap and she is still sleeping (about an hour and a quarter later) but this is ridiculous! How can she be awake that much? Help!

[omelette]

Sorry, I'm no help but we have the same problem over here.
Let's hope someone has some good advice.

[AmyY]

Ha! As soon as I read your title I thought "Hm. Must be 9 or 10 months old." I thought I was going to poke my eyes out when this happened. I never figured out why. It stopped. I never figured out why. Sorry no advice, but I knew exactly what age you were talking about without reading your post. Hugs.

[**guest**]

My ds did the very same thing. That is usually the age where they have a surge in developmental skills which makes their little brains even more active than usual.
I tried getting my ds to be more physical during the day, to be out in sunlight during the day, etc etc. Nothing worked. It was a phase and ended pretty abruptly.

It's tiring though.

[rainbowmoon]

my DS has done this on occasion. (especially when he's teething!)

I find it easier to get up and let him have play time and something to eat. sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep too. it's easier not to fight it in order to get them to sleep sooner,yk?

[timneh_mom]

That is soooo hard!!! Our son did that for many months... it seemed like from the beginning, he'd wake up in the middle of the night to nurse, then would want to be up for a couple of hours. I was so sleep deprived and fried that I don't remember how old he was when he stopped doing that. We just kept him in his room, with the light off, and stayed in bed with him until he was asleep. It was really miserable though and I sure wish I had advice for you... I think for us it was something he grew out of. (He has his own room but there is a double bed in there if he needs to sleep with someone.)

We never could co-sleep because whoever slept with him was never rested, it never helped us really. Now he's 2 and just sleeps better in his own space and so do we! It's not like we didn't try though, heck, we tried everything...