please please please help me!!!! dont know what else to do

[lilsmum]

dd 10mth, has always been a excellent sleeper. easy to get to go off on her own always slept through. she recently had a virus and one night she had a very high temp (39) she just wanted to be held so thats what i did, now i think she has enjoyed that too much and will not settle unless i get her to sleep in my arms, and if she wakes up (which is every 1/2 hr!!) same thing only if i get her out and hold her then put her back when she has gone to sleep.

if i put her in slightly awake she screams... if i dont pick her up she screams, and i dont mean a normal cry she cries that bad she almost vomits and cant breathe at all!!in fact the first time she did this i thought she had asthma!!!took her 10 min to get her breathing back to normal.
i have tried cc doesnt work with her she just gets in such a state its unbelieveable!! tried pu/pd no good!!any ideas? or should i just ride the storm? today i havent let her nap apart from 1/2 hr and she only went off to sleep finally at 2.30am and was awake again at 5.30am... she had 1/2 hr all day thats it, and went to bed at 8pm.

please help because i really dont know what to do apart from never sleep again!!!

xx

Oh Honey. sadly I have no advice but poor you. Sending you and dd big hugs{{{{}}}}.

Stuff your ears with cotton wool?

Is she in your room? If not, now's the time to be moving her out and toughening up. You know she can sleep, she knows she can sleep - in the evening turn the telly up for a good 5 minutes before resorting to going in if she's crying. Be firm with your evening routine, whatever that is, and things will return to sleep-y night i promise. Mine did the same, after 9 months of 2 hrly feeds ALL THE TIME, he finally started sleeping though but then a few months later had a few bad nights and started playing me for a sucker. So, we moved him out, and presto he sleeps again. IT WILL PASS, YOU WILL SLEEP AGAIN! I promise...

hi lilsmum - poor you - there is NOTHING worse than sleep deprivation imo

we had something similar with DS at roughly the same age. The first thing I would say is let her nap as normal during the day - they're not like adults and if they get overtired they will find it harder to get to sleep not easier.

Given that she's been a good sleeper, it seems unlikely that one night of holding would change that - I know it probably feels like but those days aren't necessarily over. Do you think it could be night terrors? They tend to start around this age. Don't know if any of the following will help but some of the things we tried with DS were: making sure there was nothing in his room that could cause funny shadows, eg bags hanging on the back of the door, leaving his door open to let some light in and putting a radio on very quietly (we had it on Radio4 as it's mainly talking through the night) so if she wakes up she doesn't feel alone.

The other thing is, will she settle if you stroke her head / back, hold her hand whilst she's still lying in her cot? If you can settle her to sleep in situ then she might get used to putting herself to sleep again.

HTH & Good luck!