18 month old waking up - and standing up - throughout the night!! Help please!

[Petticoat]

I'm desperate for any help/advice/words of wisdom!! My 18 month old has started waking up throughout the night - started about 3 weeks ago. No pattern to the times. He started waking and sitting up and crying - we'd go in, nudge him so he was lying down and he'd go straight back to sleep. He is still waking up, but is now standing up and howling. There's no way he is going to get himself back to sleep as he can't lie himself back down.

I'm at my wits end with it and just don't know what to do to help him get back into a sleep routine. I've tried leaving him, but I have a five year old and I don't want him disturbed.

Is anyone else going through the same thing - or even better, has anyone come through the other side?

It's apparently fairly common to have sleep disturbances around 18 months. We had an awful time of it for about two months . DD would wake, stand up and scream, we would go in, lie her down, she would stand up again. We tried taking her out of bed to settle her, but she woke up as soon as we put her back. Or we would stand over the cot with one hand on her back to stop her standing up. This normally went on for about two hours every night.

What finally worked was going in and telling her to lie down and go to sleep without touching her. At 18 months she was able to understand that command and I felt by me being there she would be reassured and not scared. Once we started doing that, she settled fairly quickly into sleeping through again .

You say your ds can't lie himself down, can't you teach him to? Maybe with a game where you offer him toys low down near the floor so he has to bend down to take them?

You can read about the 18 month sleep regression here and here and here.

I'd go with teaching him to lie down (in the daytime, that is!).

I feel your pain, though - my 17 m.o.'s sleep is always upset by developmental spurts .

thank you both, it's so good to know we're not alone - and that hopefully this will all come to an end! Great tip about teaching him to lie down, will start on that in the morning! AngelDog thanks for the links, the last one was really helpful - and will be printed off and stuck on the kitchen wall.

My 19mo wasn't very good at lying himself down until they started doing song at playgroup! Just an idea, good luck!