Every few nights for a week or 2, 14 mo DD has been waking every 10 minutes for 1-2 hours at night. Various times at night. Tonight it was 11pm, 2 nights ago it was 3:30am. She shares a room with 4.5 DS, who doesn't typically wake when she cries, but it makes us more likely to go in sooner to intervene. Here's what we typically do: she stands up in crib and cries, we give it a minute or two (but not long b/c we don't want DS to wake), we go in and lay her back down and immediately leave. She doesn't cry - in fact, she stops crying the moment we walk in! She seems to go back to sleep, only to wake crying 3-5 minutes later crying. And on and on it goes usually for 1.5 hours. It's maddening. Sometimes, we do take her out of the crib and sit with her in a dark room for 5-10 minutes - just to break the "cycle". Here are some other facts:
-- No teething as far as I can tell
-- She goes to bed awake for nap and nighttime and is able to get herself to sleep almost every time
-- She has never been good at self-soothing. Has no lovey or comfort item despite my repeated attempts to introduce one. She slept in a crib in our room until she was 1yo. This is probably the reason she still wakes crying (b/c she developed a bad habit) and never learned to self-soothe. And probably why she never learned to play nicely in her crib in the morning - b/c she would see us in our bed and want out immediately.
-- She's really an angel during the day, except that she's always been tough at night. Didn't STTN until a year and has still night wakings more often than not.
Here's her schedule:
6:30- Wakes up CRYING hysterically (every morning since she was born basically - that's a story for another post!). I go in and lay her down in the crib. She sleeps for another 1/2-1 hours. I don't get her out of bed b/c she's too tired and is waking prematurely. If I do get her out at this time, she's miserable for at least 15 minutes. Considering trying W2S, but worried that it will backfire!
7/7:30 - Wakes for the day (still cries when she wakes, but smiles the second she's out of her crib).
1-3 - Nap at daycare
7:45/8:00- Bed. Goes down easy if we get her in early enough.
How do I get her to help herself back to sleep? She already knows how to go to bed independently. We're at a total loss. My guess is that it's a self-soothing issue, pure and simple. But I have no idea how to help her self-soothe. We're not using props, and we don't stay in longer than we need to - only enough to calm her. Then we leave. HELP!!
