Does anyone else’s DC cry in their sleep?

[JBFletcherismyaunt]

So DS (16months) cries very night on and off for approx 2 hours, always at the same time. Not full on crying but more of an intermittent wail and he wakes the whole house. But he seems to be asleep when he’s doing it. Often I’ll go in and pick him up or give him a cuddle and sometimes it seems to make him worse and he starts screaming then. A bottle of milk will settle him for 20 mins or so, but then he’s off again. No matter what we seem to do he goes on like this for 2 hours.

I really don’t know what to do for the best with him. Any similar experience or suggestions?

No advice to give, sorry, but my almost 16yo DD often wakes herself up crying

I was about to say at least you can reason with a 16yo but then I remembered I was 16 once!!

Yep, mine does that. Sometimes he goes back off to sleep again after five minutes without actually waking up, sometimes he wakes up properly and is hungry, sometimes he wakes up properly and god knows what is wrong with him; last night he wanted Mummy to play cars with him (at 2am). He’s 2, and not showing much sign of growing out of it I’m afraid. It seems to come and go, I wondered if it was teething but he’s not had any new teeth in a while. We leave him to it now unless he’s properly screaming.

Thanks Sashkin, I left him for a while last night but felt so guilty. It started when he was teething a while ago, then we had a week of sleeping through and I was over the moon, then this started about 4 weeks ago.

Yes, my nearly 2 year old DS does this on and off. 95% of the time he isn't awake and will stop crying / whimpering within 5 minutes but he might does this a few times throughout a night. (And he wakes up at 5am still regardless of what would seem a bad nights sleep)

Yes...both my dc do this. My eldest started doing this at 3 months old and still does it on and off now- she's almost 6. My youngest (18 months) does it mainly when he's teething. I try to leave him to see if he'll settle and sometimes he does eventually but sometimes he ends up waking himself. I've never found a consistent method to settle either of them when they're in the midst of it. Sorry that I have no major advice that I can give you but sometimes it helps just knowing others are also going through it.

Thanks Twittle and Duck, yes it does help to know you're not alone. I guess it’s just a thing some little ones do.