20 months old. 18mnth sleep regression?

[sunflower321]

my little girl has always been a fairly good sleeper. She has good through phases of bad sleeping but in general she's a hns and has always loved her bed. She was very sick 2 weeks ago with a stomach bug. Couldn't eat for 6 days. When she got better she had an enormous appetite and started waking during the night for 4 hours. After 4 nights i figured she was hungry and gave her a yogurt. It seemed to help and a 4 hour waking became 1.5-2 hours. I read on this website that one of the exceptions to a toddler waking during the night hungry is following an illness. It is now 10 days since she got better. She eats 4 substantial meals a day with some snacks so i now don't think it's hunger waking her. I read here again that appetite changes can be linked with a sleep regression. She still has a huge appetite which is new for her. She never went through an 18 month regression and didn't go through a developmental leap. Her speech is bad and she has been referred for speech therapy. But lately she has been making an attempt to say more words than she has before. So i wonder is this a leap accompanied by a sleep regression. Since the start of summer she has been staying up later. But i don't think this is the reason as she has been like this since may sleeping 8.30- 8.30 on average with a 2 hour nap at 1. But the last week she is waking anytime between 1-4 am full of chat and shouting because she doesn't want to stay in bed. I go  into her and give her milk but she stays awake shouting, talking and getting frustrated for 3-4 hours. This morning she only fell back asleep at 7am after waking at 3. How should i handle this? She wants to get up so should i let her for a while or continue making her stay in bed in the dark? Or should i read to her in her room? I just don't know what to do when she so clearly doesn't want to sleep. Sorry for the long post

[sunflower321]

i just wanted to add that she is also taking at least an hour to in to sleep at night when put down which never used to happen. She just stands in her bed shouting and talking to herself. Obviously I don't do cio so i go in and out of her room but i do leave her crying for a little while because she just does seem to be so wound up and i think maybe she's releasing the tension or calming down a bit.

[sunflower321]

anyone?

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Hi sorry your post got missed! Do you think she is waking due to being ut? Thinking possibly she needs her nap capped a wee bit to help combat that though possibly also just developmental and needs to be ridden out.  Personally I would not get my child up if they were awake in the night or read to them, just lights off and either wi/wo or gw depending on why they woke and then looking at twraking the day sleep to see if it helps.

[karindmor]

I wouldn't get her up either.  Bed time is bed time.  We had a similar situation with our son who wanted to party in the middle of the night.  At 20 months I would go in if she won't stop and have her lay down again.  Maybe tuck her in again.  Not having too much vocal or eye contact though, and then WO.  I would just keep doing this over and over so she gets the idea that she isn't going to get any food or any attention.  I know that my son will get separation anxiety after an illness or teething, so she could be fighting bedtime because of that too?  Also, did she lose sleep while she was sick?  She could either need to catch up on sleep or be undertired like the pp said.  I know that if my son has too many hours between the time he wakes up from his nap and the time he goes to bed, he'll wake up early in the morning.  Also like pp said, it could be a tweaking during the day that fixes it.