27 mth old waking in the night...

[Bananapickle]

Our DD used to be a great sleeper, 7-7 pretty much every night. However, for the past two months she has woken up for anywhere between 1 and 2.5 hrs in the middle of the night. There is no pattern or obvious reason. We've dropped her nap and then when this started we tried giving her a nap and it makes no difference whether she has a 45 minute nap, a 20 minute nap or no nap at all and a crazy busy day. Also she has started waking up really early (5:30) and this doesn't change even if she's been up for 2 hrs in the night.
To make matters worse I've had an operation so I can't get up to her in the night so my poor DH is now having to deal with it, which on top of a full time job and an MA is not doing anything for his sanity.
Has anyone got any ideas? We're exhausted! Thanks x

It's a developmental growth spurt brain change thing linked to language acquisition. It passes. Meanwhile rushing about a lot, jumping on trampolines, swimming and physically exhausting them during day, slightly earlier bed, and stodgy tea plus added fats/oil in diet (especially fish oil as good for brain helps - salmon fish cakes, potato wedges with full fat yogurt dip, banana and peanut butter on toast etc, that sort of thing).

Good luck.

Thank you, that makes so much sense as her speech is currently developing really quickly. I'll try the earlier bedtime and stodge up her diet and see how that goes.

Hope it passes soon and she is back to normal sleep...DS had 9 weeks of silly nights, vocab exploded, grew out of all his clothes, ate like small wolf then back to normal. :)