Thanks so much everyone for your thoughts and sorry for my late response... things have been hectic and as is so often the way with this little tinker, things seem to settle down from the minute I posted!
Interestingly we pretty much decided that ted was a prop and had to go based on the middle of the night wakings and not once has she woken since because she couldn't find him! Like the ideas from MDHMommy but the issue with getting her to find him is that she's usually not even properly awake, just not asleep and all disorientated. The other problem with saying that 'ted is on the floor now so he stays there' is that during the night, sometimes he falls out just from her turning over etc. so it's tricky to know whether he's been thrown out or not so it feels a bit harsh to force her to go without if you know what I mean. I might be being far too soft on this!
As for mornings, I've brought her nap time forward about 20/30 mins and knocked 15mins off and for a week now, that has resulted in much better nighttime sleep as well as helping significantly with the early starts. (routine is now awake and up between 6 and 7am, nap 12.30 to 2.30 then bed at 7.15) Twice she has woken at 5ish and when we've tried to settle her at that time in the past she just gets more and more hysterical and my big concern is that we could go through the process for an hour and then at 6am say okay, it's time to get up. My concern with that is that we'll have inadvertently taught her to cry and for long enough and she'll get what she wants. However, with renewed determination, when she has woken, we've given ted back, not made eye contact and quietly said "it's not time to get up, it's sleep time", laid her down and walked out. Subsequent times, we've said nothing and just given ted and laid her down. We had to do this three times on both occasions and she then shocked the hell out of us by falling back to sleep and waking up about two hours later so clearly still tired! What was surprisng was that my dh did this first and had virtually no crying. When I did it she got much more worked up and was physically resisting being laid down so I just left her sitting in the cot but the 3rd time I went in she accepted it and that was that.
Maybe she senses that we're now very definite on what we're doing and is responding accordingly?! In the morning when i go in and ted's on the floor that's the first thing she tells me (oh oh, teddy floor) and I say "how did he get there, did you throw him" and she nods looking a little sheepish :-) I then just reiterate that she must keep ted in bed and I say the same before nap time and at bed time.
Sorry for a ridiculously long response but wanted to share in case it's of help to anyone else. As is always the way, I'm not saying this problem is now sorted but it is significantly improved and hopefully we won't need to take ted away after all!
Kelly
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