I know we're all dealing with coronavirus stresses and maybe baby sleep is the last thing on everyone's minds, but we're at a loss and I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas for this.

Our 10mo DS has yet another ear infection. He has about three days left on his current antibiotics. Naps are averaging 2 - 2.5 hours most of the time. We really try to stick to wake windows a lot. His sleep got thrown off at night with the infections, but he is sleeping through the night until 6 a.m. again now. Bedtime is 7-7:30. However, in the past week at least, he's started this habit of waking about 30 minutes to an hour after going to bed -- and screaming his head off. Just absolutely losing it. One minute he's asleep and the next he's sobbing. We've tried letting him CIO with pop ins but the popping in seems to only make it even worse and he will just scream and scream until we relent (we don't know if it's because he's in pain with his ears and we don't want to leave him in that state for a long cry). We go in and pick him up, calm him in our arms, and once he calms down he settles and falls back asleep super quickly, but it's like he needs us to calm him. He can't (won't?) do it on his own. After that he'll sleep through the night, and any future wakings that happen, he's able to put himself back down.

We're at a loss as to what's causing the wake up -- is he in pain from his ear? A nightmare? A bad habit picked up from all these weeks of unending ear infections? I've read that it can be because of poor napping, but now that we've been home with quarantine we've actually got a pretty good nap schedule going and he seems to be doing well with it, minus random off days. Any thoughts?