Why can my baby link sleep cycles some of the time but not all the time?

[Peridotty]

Hi! My 8 month old baby wakes up every 45 mins- 1.5 hours. Sometimes she will give a wail, move around and fall back asleep. At other times she will really wake herself up and cry out for us?
She needs us to put her to sleep every time, but sometimes at around 5am I can drop her in the cot sort of awake and she will fall asleep on her own.
Why can she do this some of the time but not all the time?

Following ! Sounds like my 6 month old she's exactly the same. Sometimes she will cry and fall back asleep and others she wakes up crying needing my help.
Sometimes she can go 4 hours without my help and others she wakes every 45 mins to an hour!

Anyone have any answers? My baby was waking up every 45 mins and crying out yesterday but today she has gone through 3 sleep cycles by herself (moving about, giving a shout out, rubbing eyes) but stayed asleep!

@jdy123 babies are so strange!! Im glad Im not the only one going through the same. From one tired mum to another. x

Following... I'm the same, yesterday we had textbook naps of 1h, 1.5hrs and a cat nap in the late afternoon... today henwknt nap for more than 30 mins!?
Hopefully he is transitioning towards being able to link the cycles?

Mine is similar. I guess it's just sometimes there is something additional that is making it harder to sleep, teeth, some sort of discomfort, a noise, hot/cold, not too tired anymore etc. Sometimes my DD sleeps 4-5 hours at night, sometimes wakes after an hour. One of the reasons I've started to take a lot of sleep training stuff with a pinch of salt is that just being able to link sleep cycles clearly doesn't make them suddenly sleep longer.