DD is 13 months and for the last few weeks has been waking up between 4:30-5:30 every morning. She'll wake up, DH goes and changes her nappy and brings her to me in bed and I'll breastfeed her. She never falls asleep in our bed, once she done feeding she just sits up, rubbing her eyes, looking very tired and gets agitated if we try to lie her back down in our bed.
I then put her back in her cot and rub her back and she generally goes to sleep pretty quickly, 5 mins later however she starts howling inconsolably and will keep that up for a couple of hours. She won't feed, her nappy is clean, if we try to soothe her in the cot she screams, when we get her out she kicks away from us and tries to get out of our arms, but if we put her down she also screams. Toys don't distract her, solid food doesn't help, she won't be rocked to sleep in the pram. It's like the PURPLE crying newborns do in the evenings where nothing soothes them!
She seems like she's just exhausted but absolutely nothing gets her back to sleep, and the crying just ends after a few hours and then she's happy - so maybe she's not tired. She doesn't do this at any other time of day so I don't think she's in pain or there's a medical problem or anything.
I can't keep waking up this early, I'm losing my mind!
She goes to bed at about 6:30/7 and always falls asleep pretty well, and it's rare for her to wake up in the night before 4:30. But if she keeps this up I may jump out of a window. Regular 5am wake ups would be bad enough but the screaming for 2 hours solid is really soul destroying.