Waking Crying every 1/2 hour during he night help what can i do?????

[Justine2912]

Hi I have a lovely 18 month old who has just suddenly the past week starting waking crying in he middle of the night, i have checked that he is not poorly temp etc and he doesnt seem to be teething however he wakes from about 11am screaming and crying we go in put his dummy back in and he goes off back to sleep but say half hour later he is waking crying again, I have tried leaving him to cry but it doesnt feel right doing this and end up going in to soothe him (this is probably not helping) and this can go on until about 4am when he seems to settle down for a longer sleep. I am absolutely shattered and work full time and could do with some advice on how to get this resolved. Any ideas?

DD2 (17 mo) started something similar last night -after going through from 9pm to 6.45pm for the last month or so...
She seemed to be scared of something - maybe the dark cos it was darker than she is used to...Sad to say I gave her calpol and then put her into bed with me (tut tut)...she still seemed to find it hard to settle and woke a few times but quickly went back to sleep. Not a long term solution...
Did read somewhere that sleeping with dummies isn't a good idea - if the dummy comes out of their mouth, when they come into the light sleep stage and they can't find it they wake up and then can't get back to sleep...might be the problem? Try and wean him off it at bed time?

DD1 was a really terrible sleeper from birth ... and I went back to study full-time when she was 3 months old...after a few weeks I put her to sleep in her cot and when she woke (about 11pm) brought her into our bed and bf her back to sleep... when she stopped bf I just brought her into bed... did go on until she was about 4yo - but she could just come and get into bed with us(she still comes in now (7yo) if she has a bad dream/wakes early). But at least I got some sleep ..don't know how I'd have coped otherwise. A couple of times when I had a relative easy few weeks at work and she was older I tried controlled crying etc but even after I knew she could get herself back to sleep etc, she would still wake up every few hours (and scream) ...after a week or so of trying (and therefore no sleep) I'd decide it wasn't worth fighting about... probably should have been tougher ..