When sleep all of a sudden goes belly up, what is your plan of attack?

[okinawama]

In the past two months, my 14 month old has begun sleeping through the night. He also has been putting himself to sleep completely independently for the past 3months.

However, starting last night, he all of a sudden has been crying for 1.45min before falling asleep. He's teething, but meds make no difference and I really can't figure out any other things that could be causing all this crying!

What would cause such a drastic change OVERNIGHT? If it's happened to you, what was your plan? I know he CAN fall asleep on his own, but for some reason, he's not. I don't want to fall into any "bad habits" after working so hard to get him to fall asleep on his own but this is all so sudden Im not sure what my plan should be.

[Minnifer]

My DS is 13 mos and has also been putting himself down for the night for a while (I ferberized him at 6.5 mos; he still wakes 1-2x overnight to nurse but gets put back down drowsy, not asleep). Most nights he's happily hanging out in his crib when I leave the room, and he sings and plays for a bit and then goes to sleep. Occasionally, he's not so happy when I leave and fusses a bit, and even more rarely that turns into crying. I usually give it a minute or two to see if he's ramping up or down. If up, although my natural inclination would be to let him CIO (I am pretty non-crunchy/tough re sleep generally and babies being able to put themselves to sleep), what I have found with him is that when he cries like that something is definitely up and if I take some extra time to nurse him again, or rock, or read a book, or something, it seems to take the edge off and when I put him down again, it's usually ok. Now I've not been too successful at figuring out what exactly IS up, lol, but those times he just seems to need a little bit more from me. His teething does do a number on him but luckily motrin does take the edge off (and only 8 teeth left to get thank god!). Also, fwiw, I just read that babies start to dream around 12-14 months so wonder if they start to get freaked out about that.

Anyway, I do think they go through weird days/nights here and there, but they're usually all just stages, so I think you can try different things to soothe him without it turning into a firmly cemented bad habit super quickly. And hopefully he'll be back to his old ways soon!

[mikala]

Are you certain he isn't sick? We've definitely had out of the blue sleep hiccups but more often than not they have been related to ear infections or the start of some other sort of illness.

[okinawama]

Are you certain he isn't sick? We've definitely had out of the blue sleep hiccups but more often than not they have been related to ear infections or the start of some other sort of illness.

I guess I don't know. He doesn't have a fever,has been eating and acting normally and overall seems like himself...other than the crying before bedtime :/

Last night I picked him up/soothed him on and off for the 1.45min, and then after DS1 was completely tucked in I rocked DS2 to sleep. Tonight DS1 was much more needy during BT routine and DS2 cried for 30 min with me going in once, and then after the 30 minutes he went to sleep on his own. I just don't know. I don't want him crying by himself if there's something wrong, but I just don't know....