18month lost ability to sleep. HELP!!!

[griffintribe]

My 18m old dd has always gone to sleep on her own in the cot and stayed asleep until about 5a.m.

Since Sunday when it was too light in her room she screams when put in the cot and now wakes roughly every hour throughout the night and needs me to settle her back down.

I have put extra curtains up so the room is now dark again.

How do i get her to fall asleep on her own again.

I have left her to cry herself out and it doesn't happen. In the middle of the night i tried for two and a half hours of leaving her to cry it out.

Am at the end of my tether and need sleep

morning. totally sympathise my ds is 14months and has never slept through the night. I know it sounds back to front and like a ridiculous idea but i have heard oliver james the child psycholgist on tv before saying that bringing them into bed with you for a while ( a few days/few weeks) can help restore their confidence in sleep and they feel reassured and gradually will return to their own bed. Kiskidee a regular poster on sleep has lots of info on co-sleeping.
anyway just an idea. hopefully someone will be along soon to offer words of wisdom. Best of luck

I must admit that if i cant settle her within half an hour i do bring her into my bed but i dont know if this is making her worse. But at least we all sleep

My 16 month old DS is going through same thing. In his case it's because he's not transitioning well to having only 1 nap per day and several days he'll have only 30 minutes of sleep all day or refuse to nap entirely. This has been going on for about 3 weeks and now he's waking at night for hours and crying. He's overtired and overtired kids can't sleep well through the night. So perhaps there has been a change in your dd's sleep schedule? Also, sometimes major changes in routine (vacations, visitors etc) can throw them off. DS is very sensitive to all these things and it's sooooo hard to get him back on track but with him, the only thing that ever works is cc and the longer the problem has gone on, the longer it takes to fix (ie, letting him cry it out for a few nights won't work -- it will take weeks)

Tamdin, that's interesting about Oliver James as it is effectively what I'm doing at the moment and I assumed it was a BAD IDEA . Maybe not....let's see....