11 mo won't settle in evening - new thing - help!

[Whoamireally]

DD2 has been a great sleeper since she was born (sleeps in cot in our room). That's all just changed though.

For the last week, she'll drop off to sleep after her bedtime milk for about 20 mins, then wake up and scream the place down - after that she will then not settle again for a couple of hours and screams the place down as soon as left alone in our room and will just sit there kneeling up holding onto the bars screaming.

We're at the end of our tethers!

It could obviously be for a miriad of reasons - teeth, separation anxiety, anything - but my question is, how should I get her to settle down? WE've tried leaving her to yell for 5 mins then going in, calming her down then doing it again - this is my least preferred option as it's not her to scream and yell so don't like leaving her - pick up put down, more milk, lying on the bed with her, singing, pacing around the room - and of course being 11 months she LOVES all this and lies/ sits there chatting and beaming away...but the only thing that seems to get her to settle is dosing her with Calpol Shouldn't have to do that tho' so any suggestions appreciated!¬

We have the same problem too here, with a 12 mth old. It's really tough but it looks as if teething could be the main culprit. He didn't start teething until 11 mths and now in less than a month he has three with another two to come any day now . He wakes a lot during the night now - up to four times when he used to sleep through and that only came when he started teething.

Another cause for him is his very recent discovery of crawling and pulling up to standing. Suddenly the cot is a real fun place to be - even if I leave him apparently sleepy and settled I will hear a yowling after 20 mins and find that he is either sat bolt upright eyes closed or almost sleep crawling and blundering round the cot.

We don't really do CC. We have never really had to before as he has always been pretty good at self settling. We do try 'controlled whimpering' which works if he is over tired, but we find that letting him get really upset is counter productive for us and just results in taking extra time to calm him down. The hush retreat thing just seems to make him more upset. What we do is just go to him when he is really upset, do whatever to make him calm again (breastfeed,calpol, cuddle waybuloo) and then try again and usually this works although his old betime of 7.30 seems soo far away now.

Another possible cause atm is the heat - ds is sleeping better since we stripped him off and put him down in a short sleeved body and blanket and put a fan in his room.

Another possible cause is daytime napping - as ds is sleeping a lot less in the day, he is making it up in mega sleeps (3 hours! When he used to only have an hour) during the day and less sleepy at night. We are going to cut down the naps a little and see if that makes a difference - but if the reason he cannot sleep at night is discomfort, the sleeps during the day are just pure exhaustion.

We were told by our HV to try dosing him up with calpol before bed. This has helped a little but he still wakes during the night in pain. Afaik there is no sedation in calpol and it is just painkiller so if your dd settles after calpol it suggests that it is just removing pain and discomfort so that she can sleep?

HTH. Bastard teeth!