Teething 17 month old

[VA74]

We have gone from putting her to bed with her dummy, walking away and she just falls asleep at 7pm, and sleeps for 12 hours. To her fighting us at bedtime, crying and having tantrums. She has been waking in the night, and then waking early. She fights her tierdness in the day but ususaly naps for 1.5 hrs, and some days she is miserable and tired.

Currently I'm sitting with her in her room until she calms down and falls to sleep, and doing the same when she wakes in the night.

She only cut her first tooth at 14 months, and by the look of her gums she is obviously going to get a load together.

I need advice as to whether I'm doing the right thing sitting with her to get her to sleep. Also will she ever go back to her normal routine??

We went through this with our son who was also late getting his teeth. He ended up getting about 8 over 3 weeks and went through hell.

Personally, I wouldn't sit in with a LO until they fall asleep as they come to expect it and you'll go through more hell trying to get them to settle on their own later.

We survived by alternating between calpol and calprofen and used lots of anbesol liquid on his gums.

We'd give the calprofen 30 mins before bed so it had time to cut in. Go through the normal nightime routine. Coat his gums with anbesol just before putting him to bed. If he got upset, we'd cuddle him to calm him as soon as he was calm, we'd put him in the cot, say night night, pat his back and leave. We had to repeat the process several times and didn't leave him to scream so that he knew we were there if he needed us. When the teeth were through, he settled back into his normal routine without a problem. He even told DH to go away this am after crying because he banged his head and was trying to settle himself (he's 21 months now)

We've just had a similar 3 weeks with our 16 month old DD. She went from going to bed happily at 7.30pm-8am and napping late morning to refusing to get into the cot and crying hysterically.

We took her to the docs as it got so bad that we would be up all night with her and the only thing that seemed to calm her was walking with her in the pram or driving around. She was hysterical when she woke at night and wingey all day from tiredness. The first doc we saw said that we should get a book on toddler behaviour and try controlled crying...he didn't even examine her!

We didn't take his advice as we knew something was wrong as she normally would go to bed with no problems and it was obvious that she was uncomfortable.

After a particularly bad night when she was up screaming every hour and a half we took her back and saw someone else. She was brilliant and gave our DD a thorough examination. It turned out that she had an ear infection and lots of teeth coming through at the same time. She gave us antibiotics and the ear infection has cleared up.

She has been sleeping much better for the past couple of days, is napping in the cot (which she was refusing to do) and is much happier in the day. She isn't 100% yet but much better and we are so glad that we trusted our instincts and saw another doctor. Fingers crossed that she is on the mend now.

In our experience if a baby is upset and unwell the best thing to do is to do all you can to make them more comfortable and once the problem is resolved it is possible to get them back into whatever routine you had before.

They're all different I know but that's just our experience.

Thanks it's great to know what we are suffering is normal.
She has cut another tooth, and it looks like two more are coming through.
We have had a few better nights, but still unsettled.
Fingers crossed we will get back to our routine.