Can anyone help/sympathise/offer suggestions? DD (14 mo) was born 3 months premature, and has always been a 'high maintenance' child.
She will not let me walk out of the room unless she is with her dad, she only began sleeping through the night a few weeks before her first birthday and she sleeps very little in the day. She's always been good with food, and was eating like a horse until a few weeks ago (and, interestingly, stopped sleeping through a few weeks ago too, although has been fairly quick to settle). She got her first tooth 2 weeks ago. She's had virus after virus although seems to have been clear (touch wood) for the past 4 weeks or so. 10 days ago she had her MMR jab. She's also not far off crawling (so lots of disturbances in the past month)
For the past week she's been waking about 4 hours after going to bed. She has been murmuring and babbling, and then gradually built up to crying. I go in, and get her out of the cot, and she snuggles in and begins to drift off to sleep. However, then she goes rigid, arches her back and screams for about 20 seconds. Once she stops, she relaxes and snuggles in again, just drifting off and bang - screaming, rigid, arching back. And so it goes on. And on. For 2 hours solid last night. If I leave her in her cot she does the same. Sometimes I put her down asleep and a minute or 2 later she screams again. She's also been off her food for a week or so.
She used to suffer from silent reflux where she would scream like this, but only during feeds. She's been off the meds for that since Christmas.
It's beginning to drive me insane - What happened to my little girl who knew, briefly, how to sleep through?? I don't think it's night terrors because she doesn't wake up screaming, it's a gradual wake. She also wakes later in the night, but then settles quickly.
Please help!