8 month old awake for ages in the night but not crying

After a fair amount of work when she was younger, DD is now a great little sleeper. She has two good day sleeps and goes to bed without a peep at 7pm. On a good night she will go through till about 4:30am, have a quick feed and then go back to sleep for another three hours.

However, every couple of nights she will wake at about 1:30 and I cannot get her back to sleep for hours. Given she is 8 months old I would have no problem doing some controlled crying, except that she doesn't cry. She basically just sucks her thumb and 'talks' in this loud monotone for ages and ages. Eventually (after about 20 minutes) she does get upset and I go in, and the second I put my hands on her she's quiet. I leave the room, and 10 minutes later the monotone starts up again.

Because of the huge time gaps between her actually getting upset and me going in, we are both awake for hours. I know she's not hungry, and if I do cave in and BF then she feeds poorly and wakes up three hours later thinking it's morning and is a nightmare all day because she's so tired. I keep thinking she'll get the idea because I don't rock or pat her to sleep or anything, but she's been doing this for months now with no signs of stopping.

Has anyone had this happen? Any advice? I am absolutely wrecked, and just don't know how to train her into either falling asleep again or not waking up at all!

You are not the only one! My DD used to wake around this time, alot! and we would be up for around 3hrs each time. Although she was definitly not content chatting away in bed. she screamed blue murder if I tried putting her back to bed.

We tried the though love thing and left her to 'cry it out' But I was never very good at this (im tooo much of a softy) so on the nights I persisited on this both me and her only got more and more upset and were up for the same amount of time anyway. Just got a lot more knackered!

We also tried bringing her into our bed but she wouldnt settle there either. And just ment hubby didnt get any sleep either.

It was like she just wasnt tired?!?!?! So what we ended up doing most night was getting her up and leaving the lights down low and she would play while I layed on the couch and had some sort of rest. (I know some people will be shocked to read that I let her play) But it was the best of any of the options.

She would get up sometimes 3 or 4 nights a week! It got pretty bad. But must have been a phase because it did stop eventually.

So I dont have much advice for you sorry! Short of leaving her to 'cry it out' I dont know what else you can do? Perhaps try putting on some quiet music if shes happy to be in her cot? Might just lul her back of to sleep? Or prehaps some sort of night light? (my daughter had a neat butterfly mobile type thing, the lights would slowly change colour,) This helped her to get to sleep in the evening but she didnt want a bar of it in the middle of the night.

Best of luck!