8 Month Old Who Wakes Crying Several Times Before 10Pm, Then Sleeps Normally.

He's clearly having a difficult time falling asleep. There are few common sense ideas: he's not tired, he's bored, he's lonely, he's hungry, he knows you're all up out there, etc.

Like the other moms, 7pm sounds way to early. I don't know how families even manage such an early bedtime like that. I've heard it reported here before, but our family is not done eating dinner and cleaning up and taking baths, etc that early.

Let him stay up longer and see if he'll retire more permanently.

He's hungry. Do you feed him any solids yet? Talk to the ped. It might be time to consider cereal and fruit and vegetables. I know some people say nothing but breast milk/ formula for the first year but my children would have starved. They were eating grilled cheese and spaghetti by 8 months lol. So might be time for a bigger meal closer to bedtime.

Our kids all went down around 9pm and slept really well. Perhaps your 8 month old doesn't need to sleep from 7pm - morning with just one wake up to feed. Babies get hungry every few hours so expecting them to sleep 12-13 hours straight seems unlikely to me.

We had them down to one nap during the day by 10 or 11 months then they would sometimes crash for a few minutes around 5-6. Then they'd be up and happy and playing until bedtime around 9pm. They got plenty of sleep and didn't have this sort of issue.

I googled how many hours your child should be sleeping (At most) and the common answer was 14 hours per day. So if your baby is sleeping any during the day then 7pm is too early for his bedtime. Well, unless you get up at 5am or 6am.

It is a phase, sort of, called infancy. :-)

When my kids were infants, they often didn't go down "for the night" for a solid block of sleep until 9-10pm so to me, your baby is typical. The 7-10 block is more like napping than night sleeping.

Do continue to nurse him if he him if he seems hungry. That is also normal.

7 or 7:30? That's pretty early. He's hungry. If I were you, I'd feed him, or I'd start backing up his bedtime so you can give him some cereal before he goes to sleep, later, like 8:30. Or if he just HAS to go down that early, nurse him before 10:00 and let things keep going the way they are.

After just seeing a sleep specialist for my baby, I know she would say gradually put him to bed later. Also, you are on the borderline of not needing to nurse during the night, so consider letting him cry, leave multiple pacis in the crib if he uses one, or have hubby go in if possible. Also examine if he is getting too much day time sleep. GL!