dd is 21 months and has never been a great sleeper. She has always been tiny (2nd centile born at 5lb13) and when she was little and was waking a lot and having milk I knew one day it would pass. She's ever so much better but we are still not having a great time. She has a 90-130 min nap around 1pm most days (60-90 mins on a nursery day, more like 2+hrs if I let her at weekends/day off). ON a good night (and we have weeks on end of these good nights. she has bed at 7.30pm with about 9oz milk and sleeps til between 5.30 and 7am and then had more milk and goes back to sleep if it's before 6.45 or so. We usually get up around 7.30 (later if weekend and she's still asleep). she always goes to bed awake - snuggly rabbit in one arm, taggy blanket in the other and dummy in. She brilliant at foinding her dummy herself if needed. Some nights I'll hear a yell which rouses me and then a few secslater all quiet and she's fast asleep again
We're struggling with nightwakings where on odd nights or perhaps 3-4 nights in a row she wakes somewhere between midnight and 3am and howls screams and sobs the place down inconsolably. We offer her a dummy which gets thrown at us (altho often she is screaming/howling with the dummy still in her mouth when we go in to the room). last night she was chewing frantically on her fingers and yelling "ow ow no no no" so I gave her nurofen, bonjela on a dummy and a sip of water. she seems incredibly distressed and last night after musical beds (if ill she'll settle in with us but not normally) she went back in her cot at about 1am having been up for an hour and I am ashamed to say I left her to scream and fell asleep myself to hear her again at 520 when she had her milk and went back to bed til 7.15.
I am asuming this is teething as when we get episodes like this they tend to go on until a new tooth pops out and then get better again for a few weeks. She got a random late incisior last week and then was better for 4 nights, I think this is canines (thank god all incisors and premolars through now) oor little mite diodn't get any teeth til 15 months and has really suffered.
anyway, how to I tell if this is teething or monkeying? I still think she's upset and there's a reason (if not why would she often sleep through and be very good at self settling)