16 month old sleeping issues

[sophieharris88]

Hi all, I?m new to mumsnet and have a bit of an issue with my 16 month old daughter. She keeps waking up in the night with grizzling that leads to full on crying/ screaming for no particular reason. Now I know what you?re all going to say: ALL 16 month olds wake up right? But please consider:

? She has been sleeping through her entire life from 6 weeks old. This is only the last three weeks.

? When she comes into our bed she falls asleep immediately ? so there is nothing physically wrong with her: yes, some teeth are coming through, but it isn?t teething, as she has no probs when with us or in the day. She?s not hungry / cold / hot. She?s not ill, she doesn?t get herself into awkward positions, and her nappy is always clean. She goes down well at 7pm.

? In the daytime she is fine ? in fact more than fine, she is incredibly chirpy and going through a period of rapid development (language / observation etc). She is eating well and having a decent 1h 30m nap at lunchtime.

I know we?ve been incredibly lucky / spoiled with how well she has slept so far, and so we?re very anxious to get her back in her groove of sleeping through. We have tried ignoring the crying ? which worked for a while and she was able to settle herself back to sleep. But now the crying is penetrating two doors ? hers and ours ? and so it?s pointless to ignore it, because we can hear it anyway! And it?s getting really distraught-sounding!

Repeat, there is nothing obviously physical that is upsetting her. Her tracking record of sleeping is excellent, and none of this seems to have any impact on her behaviour during the day. It could be:
a) nightmares / night sweats (seems a little young for that ? she doesn?t know what wolves are!) #
b) some sort of reaction to her development because her mind is going through a bit of an overheated / accelerated phase (seems a bit farfetched to me). Or the last and most likely:
c) she is becoming intrinsically more needy/clingy. If that?s the case, what can we do about it? Apart from ignoring the crying completely?

My view is that these little episodes are phases, often related to periods of rapid development, and that they pass when the child is ready to move on.

I wouldn't ignore, personally, as I think at this age they are still v little with limited understanding of time/space and they need you to be responsive to them. I would and do ignore my 3.5 year old if she is being silly about sleeping. I don't ignore my 13 month old son because he is too small and I know from how my daughter was that these things are phases and they come out of it when they are ready. Its hard when you are in the middle of it though, you feel you need to "do" something to sort it out when actually my view is there is not much you can do really.

My daughter had a phase of awful sleep from about 17/18 months, just before she had her "language explosion" and started talking much more. My son is in an awful phase at the mo - but has just started getting better - sure enough he took his first steps recently and is really in a period of rapid change and learning new things.

I think you may well just have to go with it, at least for a few weeks, and see how it goes. If there is still a problem in a months time then maybe think about some sort of gentle sleep training.

But as I said (and I know its a personal viewpoint) I don't think its good to ignore babies/small toddlers. There comes a time when they are old enough for you to take a stricter line but I think that time is closer to 2 or 3 yrs.

Hope that helps, and sympathies!