My daughter is almost 4 now but I still think about those nights. From around 6 months to almost 2 years, she would regularly wake up between 1–3am completely wide awake. Not crying from hunger. Not in pain. Just done sleeping and ready to engage with the world.
We tried everything. Rocking, feeding, white noise, letting her fuss, not letting her fuss, earlier bedtime, later bedtime. Nothing worked consistently. She would only go back to sleep when she physically exhausted herself sometimes an hour later, sometimes two. The hardest part wasn’t even the exhaustion. It was the helplessness. That feeling of sitting on the floor of a dark nursery at 2am with a wide awake baby thinking .. am I doing something wrong? Is something wrong with her? Why can’t I figure this out? Nobody told us this was even a documented thing with a name and actual solutions until way later. Anyone else go through this? What did you wish someone had told you earlier?