My DD, now 18 months, has woken up between every 45 minutes to 3 hours for every single night (and nap) of her life, with absolutely zero exceptions - the shorter time obviously being particularly bad phases. >95% of these wake ups have required me to [breast]feed her back to sleep, leading to the world and their dog telling me she can't "self settle"... even though I've watched her stir on the monitor plenty of times in that 18 months and not require intervention.
Anyhow, she currently has a bad case of bronchiolitis. She sounds like she's drowning when she coughs, and thus you can imagine trying to sleep when you're constantly hacking. But guess what, despite often lying there whimpering, she's not needing me to go in and settle her every time - in fact no more often than I do usually when she's perfectly well. For context, she's fine in herself when she's up and awake so it's not as though she's super lethargic because she's ill.
I am constantly questioned, mostly by family, about her sleep and "is she still not able to settle herself yet?" and passing judgemental, comparative comments. However I feel after this bout of illness, I theoretically can and should be saying "she IS capable of settling herself" because she's 100% got reason to be up crying out for me all night and she's not.
Is that fair to say?