Sudden Fear at night.

L • She/her

My 19 month old daughter has always been a decent sleeper. We have our bedtime routine that started when she was 9 months old. Bath or wipe down, diaper change, lotion, pjs sleep sack, tooth brushing, story time and cuddling and then into her crib.

For the past 6 months or so, she’s been very good about getting to sleep. We used to rock her, but she didn’t want that anymore so we just started putting her down, and majority of the time she’d be asleep within 5 to 10 min.

For the past two weeks tho, every time we walk out of the room, she gets completely hysterical.

We reassure her, rub her back a bit and then leave. She’s normally fine within a couple minutes, but if not, we reassure her.

Last night when we went to put her down, she started breathing really heavy and acting scared. We cuddled her and put her down, she screamed when we left but settled quickly.

It kills me that she could be scared or upset. We don’t let her cry it out, we give her a couple minutes to settle, never more than 5-10 and we go in.

Have any of you had this experience? What can I do to make her feel safe? We have the same sound machine nightlight we’ve had since she was born, and she has her binky and her stuffy with her.