My 17 month old is going through a phase (hope it’s a phase!!!) she’s refusing naps mostly literally kicking off for hours on end to the point where I just get her up some days. Other days she says night and I put her in bed and she’s fine. So she is able to get herself to sleep. Of a night when she hasn’t napped she also is fine going to sleep which is great. However two nights now this week (consecutive) she has woke been unsettled for 2 hours. Crying in her sleep at first then escalating to screaming to the point I have to go in to settle her to put her down for a few minutes for it to start again over two hours. She will then usually sleep the rest of the night through.

These two nights was one night 11-1am then 1-3am in this time I offered medicine water milk nothing seemed to help. One of the nights she had napped 1.5 hours in the day the other 45 mins. Following these two nights we had one solid 13.5 hour sleep, with no nap in the day. Last night (the next night) she didn’t nap in the day but we had the same thing again this time from 10:30-11:45pm and had to go in for a quick cuddle at 1am. She is grinding her teeth, chewing her dummy on the side of her mouth, screaming, crying, clinging, throwing her dummy etc.

She does usually sleep relatively well and if she does wake it’s usually just a case of pop the dummy in and she’s fine. She is tired in the day of course but seems to be when I go to put her in her cot sometimes she is resisting - I know she can self settle so I’m assuming this means something is going on or is wrong with her. She won’t cosleep which I guess I’m thankful for and it makes no difference it seems if she has napped or not.

She had a whole week last week of no naps and only 1 bad night & 2-3 early wake ups which I can manage. I also have a 2.5 month old so she’s sleeping through which is a godsend right now. My partner does help etc and that’s not an issue. My issue is I don’t know if this is common of teething as we’ve never had this before. Her pattern of teething is 1-2 nights wake up and ask for milk, few nap refusals but never like this. Like one or two skipped naps or short naps.

She has all of her teeth except her second molars on top and bottom. Could she be getting these early and they’re taking a few weeks to break? I can’t feel anything on the gum but she isn’t happy about me feeling it in that area anyway. Cant feel any lumps or see any redness. am I right in the fact if it was behavioural it would be consistent behaviour and some days she wouldn’t settle okay? She is worse when overtired but I’m not spending hours and hours trying to get her to nap for it to make no difference to her night wake ups. She absolutely will not sleep in bed with us, in the car or the pram. We have tried.

Am I being unreasonable to think it’s behavioural?

I don’t think it is to be honest but I’m not sure. She’s also about a week from the end of leap 10 so this could be contributing.