17 mo having looooong wakes in middle of night - any advice out there?

[deepheat]

Put a similar thread up about a month ago but things not really improving at all. Our DD very rarely has any problems settling - we can generally just pop her in the cot at 7 after bath and a story and walk out the room. The difficulty is that she will then wake at some point between 1130 and 0100 and is an absolute nightmare to get back to sleep. Sometimes she will fall asleep on me but scream the moment she goes back in the cot (even if it looks like she's in a really deep sleep), sometimes she will just scream, sometimes she will lie in her cot and not sleep but grumble/cry/chat.

Leaving her to cry isn't an option because, a) rightly or wrongly, me and DW have agreed we don't want to do it (we have tried with no success in the past), and b) DW is 4 months pregnant with DC2, is not very well and needs to sleep.

She has struggled with teeth for the last couple of months (molars and eye-teeth) and had croup last week (still got a cough but over the worst thank goodness) but don't think this explains it all.

This has now been going on for a couple oof months. We are trying to get to bed before 9 to compensate, but this is meaning that we get little decent time together, I am knackered for work in the morning (I have to be up by 6) and hate leaving a knackered DW with a tired, grumpy and high maintenance DD for the day. Any advice welcomed. Interested in wake to sleep stuff but thought that was for kids who woke at a particular time every night - not sure this is 'routine' enough.

Suggestions??

Should say that over the past month or so the wakes have varied in length, best being about 1 hr (this is fine), worst being about 5 (this is not fine!).

Is she having too much sleep in the day, or too little, and have you tried moving her daytime sleep to see if that makes a difference? You need to try things for at least several days to see a valid result, don't go on the basis of one night iyswim.

How are her ears? Earache hits a nighttime, if she's had a virus/cold/teething it could be that. You could try dosing her with Calpol when she wakes up in the night and see if that helps. (if you don't do that already)

I don't think wake to sleep is going to work, but it might be worth trying.

And it depends on what you mean by 'leaving her to cry' - ignoring or going in just once, or sleep training? If you don't want to take the route of going in, lying her down, out the door, wait 2 minutes then back in again etc method, fair enough, but it might work at her age. I wouldn't do it on a young baby personally, and I don't like to leave them to scream, ignored, but sleep training can work. It may not have worked in the past, but she's older now nad she might be more receptive to it?

And there are several methods of sleep training but I do understand if that's not a way you want to go.

Cheers for the reply. We do already hit the Calpol if we think she's in pain. Sleep training is difficult because if we try and lie her down she's up again before we've walked out the door. Haven't noticed any signs of earache, but I will keep an eye out.

Daytime sleep isn't too bad - varies between 1-2 hours depending on need/interruptions.

My DS2 did that - long periods of being awake and basically having a party in his cot. If he was crying or in pain, we'd give him medicine and he'd generally go to sleep. But when he was awake and chuntering happily, all that really worked was ignoring him I'm afraid and going in to comfort, soothe and shush to sleep if he did start crying...