How to help my 11-month-old fall asleep again after waking?

Question

My 11-month-old son has been sleeping in his crib since he was two months old. He is a happy baby during the day. He has a great appetite and I breastfeed about 4 times a day and when he wakes in the night.

Recently he has been waking in the night. I breastfeed and burp him, then put him back down like normal. Now he starts to scream and cry. I go in every half hour, pick him up, calm him and put him back, but he continues to cry. It lasts for hours. At this point, I just don't know what to do. I have a three-year-old trying to sleep in the next room. We are all sleep deprived.

I put him down to bed/naps awake and he knows how to self-soothe. I don't understand why he cannot fall back to sleep in the middle of the night. He is not hungry as I feed him plenty of breastmilk at night, I burp him, make sure his diaper is not soiled. I am out of ideas as to why he is crying so much.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Answer 1

There are a lot of possibilities, but a few to check. Definitely talk to your pediatrician as soon as you can, both because it's possible there could be an underlying medical issue, and your doctor will know your child better than random strangers on the internet and have good advice.

• Acid reflux. Is it worst when he's lying down? Try not feeding him one night before bed (feed him an hour before). Acid reflux is worsened by eating and then lying down shortly thereafter.
• Night terrors. Not a lot you can do about those; cosleeping can help in the short term (and he's old enough for that not to be much of a risk) but that's only a short term fix. Those go away eventually (hopefully).
• Teething. This would probably be all day thing, though, but it's possible he has some teething symptoms that happen to be worse at night. Does acetaminophen or ibuprofen (Tylenol or Advil) help? This is not a good long term solution, both because it's not good to take these for a long time, but it could help if it's a short term teething thing. Definitely see your doctor if you go this route.
• Mental changes leading to fear of abandonment. This happens periodically for some children; they go through a 'wonder week' or whatnot and suddenly are no longer comfortable in situations they used to be. My oldest does this every few months (almost 3 now); goes through a week or so where he's waking up and walking into our room every night because he's scared that he doesn't know where Daddy is. We just muscle through it and a week later he's fine again- just needed to know we were there when he needed us.