Is it the teeth?

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but Della has pretty much been a champ sleeper since she started sleeping through the night around 2ish months old. But lately something has really been throwing her snoozing out of whack.

It started a couple weeks ago. We do her usual bedtime routine – read a few books in her chair before bed, take her books and little toys to bed, say night-night to all the characters on her wall, she turns on her little musical/nature sounds thing that hangs on the side of the crib, then we put her blanket on and voila. Sleep.

Now, however, once we leave the room, the cries start. As soon as we get back to the living room and sit down we hear, “Mama, Dada, Mama, Dada….” And instead of trailing off as she falls asleep as they have in the past, her cries just get more persistent. So one of us will usually go in, rock her for a minute or 2 since she always stands up and says “rock” at that point, then she’s usually good for the night once back in her crib. Sometimes it does take a couple rounds, but most often if she cries like that it’s just once we go in and then done.

It used to be like this for her naps too, but fortunately those have gotten better. Now I can usually just put her down and that’s that, as it used to be.

I can’t figure out what’s throwing the little girl off so much. At first I thought maybe it was not having her daycare routine in place anymore and being home all day with me. Then I thought maybe it’s her 2 year molars, since all 4 of those have come in during basically this same poor-sleep time frame too.

Oh, she’s also started waking up about once a night most nights now too. That seems to have coincided with this crying bedtime routine window as well.

Any ideas? Do you think it’s her teeth? Growth spurt? Just annoyed? I’m all ears, because within the next couple weeks we also need to transition her into a big bed to get the crib moved into our room for Dv2.0. Hopefully that doesn’t completely make her head explode.