15 month old screaming for 2 hours every night

[Shanini]

HELP! My 15 month old daughter was, until now, a fantastic sleeper - she has slept through the night, 7 til 7 since she was 7 months old. OK, we had the odd blip, but who doesn't?! However during the past 2 weeks she has started to wake like a switch at 4.30 to 5 am, screaming her head off, and sometimes she hasn't gone back to sleep at all, other times she has screamed for 2 hours and then finally gone back to sleep. I have tried calpol, with no effect (5 mls), picking her up and cuddling her, bringing her into our bed (a no-no, I know, but what can you do at 5 am?!), giving her a drink of water, ignoring her completely, but nothing seems to be having an effect.

This has left us all really tired - she of course can sleep during the day, but we can't! I'm also getting really frustrated - not only do I not know what is causing this, I have no idea what to do to stop it. The worst thing is that she is obviously really distressed - at other times she just chats to herself if she wakes up, but at the moment it is full blown screaming.

I wonder whether she could be teething, but I would expect calpol to help if this is the case. Also, with previous teeth she's woken up for a few minutes at a time and then gone back to sleep again, not screaming for 2 hours at a time!

Any advice would be really gratefully received!

It's a rude shock to the system when you've just got used to decent night's sleep!

Just throwing out some ideas:

Does she have blackout curtains/blinds? Is she waking with the light? Or conversely she be frightened of the dark and need a night light?

Could it be night-terrors? Maybe worth waking at 4.15am and watching to see if she's giving the signs of being distressed in her sleep. If it is night terrors, there are various ways of approaching it e.g. wake them fully about 15 mins before it kicks off and then let them resettle, it seems to break the pattern.

Hope she settles soon for you.

Have a read here and see what you think.
www.askmoxie.org/2007/10/55-week-sleep-r.html
My DS went through a few nights of this and we couldn't work out what was wrong. He's over it all now.

Thanks for your responses. For just as much of an unknown reason as why she was waking up, she has suddenly started sleeping through again. I still have no idea what started it, but I think that by me getting up and giving her loads of cuddles, calpol etc etc every night, she got used to it. We ignored her in the end for 2 nights, which was really hard but seemed to do the job, as since then she's been sleeping again. Phew!