Please help 20 nth old waking and becoming hysterical

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DS is 20 mths old and has never been a brilliant sleeper - totally my fault as he always BF to sleep then when I returned to work I'd bring him in with us if he woke in the night just so we'd all get some sleep.
Current situation is he has bath etc then milk and is cuddled to sleep then put in cot. If he wakes during the evening one if us goes up and resettles him. If he wakes after I've gone to bed he gets brought in with us.
He's recently had a horrible cough that woke him a lot and made him sick. Since then he's woken a few times in an evening and VERY quickly worked himself into such a state he's made himself sick - the appearance of one of us in his room doesn't seem to have any calming effect when he's like this and if anything he gets more worked up initially .
We've tried leaving more than just his tiny nightlight on but that made no difference.
So have we created this awful problem by not teaching him to fall asleep on his own and therefore making him scared when he wakes? The being hysterical and vomiting is a very recent development and prior to this last cough etc we would have several nights on the trot of him staying asleep in his cot all night.
Any ideas? I know we have to bite the bullet and try to teach him to get to sleep on his own but am wondering the best way to do this if he's capable of getting himself into such a dreadful state so quickly!

Hi, I'm not sure I can offer much useful advice but I really feel for you having struggled for 18 months with my little boy who really struggles with sleep. He is still BF and sometimes feeds to sleep but does usually re-settle.

Anyway, first of all please don't think you have caused this because I am pretty sure this is not the case. I think your little one has been totally thrown off by the illness he's had and it has affected his sleep. The same thing happened to my DS who is still recovering from a 6 week long illness extravaganza! He also gets more hysterical if he's crying at night and we go in so I know what you mean by that.

It has taken me a good week, and some help from kind souls on here, to realise that my DS is overtired (he lost out on a lot of sleep over the time he was poorly). The signs for us were; 1 hour nap (at best) during the day, night terrors and night wakings and early starts (anything from 3am onward, one night it was 2am and he refused to go back down until 6!!)

So, as of last night he is on early bed time, 6pm instead of 7pm and for the first night since January he had 11.5 hours uninterrupted sleep and woke up 45 minutes LATER this morning.

I'm just sharing this with you as if you think your little boy might be overtired it could be worth a try, obviously it might be a totally different situation but the signs he is showing sound very similar to us.

Hope that helps some?

Sorry, I meant to say he sometimes feeds to sleep but does usually self-settle (not re-settle) x

That's definitely a thought thank you.