Hello. My son will be two in two weeks. He goes to bed fine and sleeps all night in his room in his crib. However, about two hrs after he goes down, he wakes up (75% of the time) crying. We go in and rub his back for 10 secs to 2 mins and he goes back to bed. Odd. Could it be allergies - post nasal drip waking him? Dreams? Any thoughts?
My 4-yo has been doing something similar. Look up night terrors. It's like they get "stuck" between levels of sleep and can't move on. What we do, is about 15 minutes before he usually wakes up, one of us goes in and pats him on the back, rearranges his covers, or something like that so that he stirs and goes back to sleep. He will grow out of it eventually.
My DD does this too. I usually don't go in unless she can't calm herself down though. It really hasn't been a problem. I wouldn't worry too much about it. It doesn't sound like it is a problem for him or you so why worry?
i'm almost positive my son did the same thing. First, remember everything comes in phases and it won't last forever.,
Secondly, Remember that, as much as you come in to sooth him back to sleep, he is equally learning to expect that, and therefore become dependent on that. I know its hard, but if you just ignore him, you hold your breath as you hope he can self sooth back to sleep. He may walk to your room, where you take his hand and walk him back and tuck him in with a kiss *and a soothing cd/radio helps a lot.. he won't feel so alone in the dark quiet room...
---Do you have a night light too?
Probably 2 hours is pretty much how long his first sleep cycle is. We go through cycles of deep and light sleep through the night. You can read more about it here
http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleeping.htm
(look under "Sleep stages: the sleep cycle")
If he learns to fall asleep by himself, it should get better. When putting him to bed, you could try rubbing his back to calm him down, but just before he falls asleep, leave him to fall asleep by himself. This way he -hopefully- will not expect you to rub his back when he wakes up. He is not fully awake at that point anyways and he needs to learn to go back to sleep from that point only :-)
You could also try to make sure there is no noise or distraction in the house to make him wake up around that time (I am assuming you are not gone to bed yet at that time and he may hear some noises or see light etc).
Is he teething? Try giving him motrin before bed. My son has his "wake up" time which has been pretty consistent. He cries out, but I don't think that he actually wakes up most of the time. We let him cry it out, since we wake him up when we go in there and make it worse. It seems to be more habit than anything else. Also, it usually doesn't happen with the motrin. Sometimes just screwing with his routine breaks him of it too. (When we have had to be out past his bedtime, etc.)
i heard when they wake up a few hours after going down, it could be night terrors... which is not a big deal, and apparently there's nothing you can do about it... some of them are bad, some are mild.. yours look like mild (or may be thats not even it...) but i read that they can be really bad where they're uncontrollable, and its when you cant even wake them up at that point... it passes... good luck...
PS you can always ask your doctor...
have him tested for sleep apnia,if there has been any kinda violence around him it could also stem from the traumma of that. i hope you solve the problem soon so he can wake up a happy baby. Good Luck mommy!!
