Hi,
My LO is now nearly 15 months old, and has been (since about 7 weeks old) a very good sleeper during the night, going down around 7.30pm and waking around 6.45/7. Exceptions to this are generally only when he is very poorly, teething or going through a leap/'wonder week'. Since approx 3 weeks ago, he has started waking in the night, sometimes around 2/3, althugh occasionally it is a little later. We have a night or two of good sleep and then 2-4 nights in a row of interrupted sleep, as described above. On some occasions, his cry has suggested he has been in pain with his teeth (he still only has two bottom teeth!), so I have comforted him and given him Nurofen, and within 30-40 minutes he has generally gone back to sleep until the morning. However, for many of these nights I am not convinced he is in pain and instead am fairly certain it is a developmental leap that is waking him up. I would generally pick him up and comfort him but on these occasions it is really difficult to put him back into the cot without him standing up straight away and it can take a long time to get him back to sleep. I have ended up comfroting him in the chair or holding his hand whilst in the cot, but on a number of occasions I have also had to use Nurofen as he hasn't gone back to sleep (and I am uncomfortable with doing this when I am not certain he is in pain). I am concerned that I have reinforced the waking up now, such that more nights than not he is waking and will require me taking him out of the cot to comfort him before he goes back to sleep. When he was a baby I used sssht pat to extend naps beyond 40 minutes when he went through a nap regression, however this doesn't work anymore understandably. i have therefore read on the boards and think the gradual withdrawal approach might be indicated here...he is a textbook baby but reacts very badly to walk in walk out (this tends to wind him up even more). Whilst I am not opposed to doing this if the advice is that this is best, I wondered if I could get some advice on using GW. Last night I tried it - he woke at 2am, so I left him for a little bit as he was 'crying down', although this then escalated so I went in and instead of getting him out of the cot I lay next to the cot and put my hand through the bars and held his hand. After some fidgeting/fussing etc he did eventually go to sleep, although this took about 1 hour. No sooner had I got back into bed he woke again, so I repeated the above. He calmed as soon as I went in (which confirmed to me that he wasn't in pain), and again it took c. 40-50 minutes for him to go to sleep. I then left the room and he slept until 6.45 (a fairly normal wake up time). I guess my questions are: is GW indicated here, and am I doing it right? And if so, how long do i keep doing this before progressing it, and what might this look like?
Thanks
