10mo waking up screaming an hour or so after going to bed happily - any ideas?? Please help!

[dairymoo]

Both of my 10mo DTs will go to sleep really happily and then for the last 3 nights DT2 has been waking an hour or two and just screaming. I've tried feeding her again (she's BF), DH cuddling her (she just pushes him away) and getting her out of bed (makes her overtired when we do end up putting her to bed). We've recently been away in the States for 3 weeks (where she slept brilliantly, sleeping through for the first time ever) and so I guess she could be suffering from jetlag but she does seem genuinely tired when I put her to bed.

I thought she might be teething (top teeth) but when she does finally drop off she sleeps all night, so why would she only feel teeth pain in the early evening?

I'm at a total loss and am just sitting here listening to her cry which is heartbreaking, but I really don't know what else to do.

Any ideas on what could be causing this?

TIA!

Could she be Overtired? Too active before bed, and lots of activity when already tired?

My DD1 and DD2 always seemed to do this when they were exhausted,nothing used to help except letting them settle themselves eventually.

I always went in and tried to settle/soothe them,but they just wanted company,and eventually I had to just stop and listen to them.

It often seems to be after a change in routine,takes maybe up to a week,to reestablish a good routine again.

I did wonder whether she was overtired as I have been trying to tire them both out in an attempt to counteract any possible jetlag.
Just caved in though and brought her downstairs (to her delight! ) and now her sister has decided to join us. Double . Am hoping that by the time I want to go to bed they will just conk out.

Anyone else have any experience of this?

If it's jet lag maybe you need to alter their body clock slowly, i think it's worse coming back from the states than going.

I'm never very keen on the "tire them out" before bed idea,after a change in routine like a holiday etc.(although I have no experience of Jetlag)

I much prefer restarting their normal routine,with a nice slow steady wind down before bed,be it bath,milk, story or whatever you normally do.

They recognise the "start" of their normal bedtime routine and usually respond to this IME.

Natural tiredness then takes over as they should be in a nice relaxed state,hopefully.

When all else fails,and if they were very distressed,I or DH would bring them down,but we had the lights very low,and T.V very low or off.We returned them to bed asap,after a cuddle and maybe a feed.

Have to say that in our case it was teething. For some reason it's the evening when we get the shrieking, rather than the middle of the night. Usually there's nothing to show for it, just a week or four of the shrieking, then it settles for a few weeks, and then miraculously the teeth pop out. Calpol at bed time might be worth a try.

Oh, the other thing that we got in a mess with was sleeping bags - great if you don't have a real wriggler who gets tied up in a knot and wakes screaming as a result. Again, seemed to be evenings only. Perhaps they hit really deep sleep later in the night - dunno, but glad it's the evenings rather than the middle of the night. I don't do middle of the night.

Oh, and thinking about it, over-tiredness has the same effect too. I'm guessing that when they 'surface' into some light sleep they are concious enough to realise they are desperate to be properly asleep. Or something!

Hope you solve it though.

We had this with dd and it did seem to be overtiredness. Any chance of putting them down half an hour earlier and see what happens ?

My DD had phases of waking about 40-60 minutes after falling asleep at night. We couldn't settle her easily as she woke up crying/screaming, so we used to bring her downstairs for 20 minutes or so to play. When put back to bed after this she would fall asleep and go right through.

No idea why she did this, it happened every few weeks for a few nights. She is now 20 months and hasn't woken at night for ages, so I think it was just one of those things

I would almost bet on it being an ear infection. Classic sign of an ear infection is pain after lying down for a while which resolves once they are upright and the fluid in the ear drains away.

Treat for now with calpoland try and get a GP appointment for tomorrow.

Soapbox - that's interesting, hadn't even considered that. Thing is though that she will settle for a nap and sleep for two hours with no problem at all. Wouldn't an ear infection cause her discomfort at nap time too?