twelve days into our first puppy ever with a nine week old lab golden mix and i am writing this at four am from the kitchen floor because the night crying has gotten worse not better and i want to know if the things i have already tried are the right things or if i am making the textbook week two mistakes that nobody warned us about

Soren is a nine week old lab golden mix from a small in home breeder thirty miles from us. We met both parents, the breeder kept the litter with the mom and the other pups until eight and a half weeks, we did the homework and we are happy with where we got him. He has been with us twelve days. The first three nights he slept hard from the carrying home exhaustion. Nights four through seven he cried for maybe twenty minutes when we put him in the crate and then slept until five am. Nights eight through twelve the crying has gotten longer and more intense and last night was three hours of escalating distress with a forty five minute screaming stretch that i was not prepared for and that is the reason i am writing this from the kitchen floor at four am.

What we have tried so far. crate placed next to our bed in the bedroom for nights four through ten so he could see us, that worked through night seven and then stopped working. covered crate with a towel for breathability so it felt den like, no change. snuggle puppy with the heartbeat insert and a warmed rice sock, helped maybe ten minutes on night eight, no measurable effect since. last potty break at eleven thirty pm with a quiet leashed yard trip, he goes every time so this is not a needs to potty crying. quick check ins at the crate without picking him up to confirm there is no actual emergency, this seems to escalate him rather than reassure him. one night where i moved the crate to the kitchen further from us thinking the closeness was overstimulating him, that night was the worst night which suggests the closeness was not the issue.

The specific questions i need answers to. one, is the night eight worsening pattern a normal piece of the eight to ten week development window that we should hold the line through, or is it a signal that the protocol itself is not working and needs to change. two, the check in piece, the trainer instagram content i have read is split fifty fifty on whether to do brief silent presence check ins or whether check ins of any kind reinforce the crying, and i need to know which side of that debate has actual support behind it and which is internet folk wisdom. three, the bedroom crate piece, our trainer at the meet and greet next week is going to ask us whether we are committed to keeping him in our bedroom long term, and i want to know whether the bedroom is the right answer for the first month and whether the eventual move to a separate room is a graduate when he is ready piece or a do it now piece. four, what are the mistakes i am probably making right now that the trained puppy people on this board would spot in the writeup above that we have not noticed because we are too close to it.

i love this dog. he is the calmest sweetest puppy in the world during daylight hours, he is house training faster than we expected, he is socializing well with the careful structured exposure schedule our breeder gave us, the crate during the day for nap rotations works without crying. the night piece is the only piece that is not working and it is hard enough that it is starting to make me question whether we did this right. tell me what i need to hear that the puppy books did not tell me