Wonder Weeks = Week(s) from Hell!

This won't be a long post - I'm not nearly coherent enough to put together much more than a few brief sentences... But first, a disclaimer:

I do not own - nor have I ever read - the Wonder Weeks book or any other similar texts on the topic. The majority of my information comes from frantically scouring the internet (mostly other blogs) in a sleep-deprived haze, trying desperately to find some explanation as to why my son has suddenly stopped believing in sleep.

Up until recently (i.e. the past month), Nathan has typically been a solid sleeper. We've had the occasional off night here and there, usually related to teething and/or being sick. We've also had a couple of random crappy nights that were caused by neither, but they've been just that: random. Until now. We've had so many horrible nights in a row that I've lost count (8? 9? I know it's definitely been more than a week... maybe 2 now?). Nathan had been sleeping 9 hours straight without a peep, waking up for a brief, early morning feeding, and then sleeping another 2-3. Some nights he even skipped the early morning feed and went a whole 10-12 hours solid. 

Now, he's waking up screaming every 2 hours. All. night. long. And then waking up for the day 1-2 hours earlier than before. Sometimes he screams for a few minutes and falls back asleep on his own. Other times we have to intervene to prevent him from getting fully worked up and wide awake (and then refusing to go back to sleep). Still other times, nothing we do to intervene makes any difference and he just keeps screaming. He's clearly mad that he is awake. He so obviously wants to be sleeping. He's frustrated and exhausted. We're frustrated and exhausted. The dog makes it a point to avoid all of us and has taken to sleeping in the basement.

After having ruled out every possibility I knew of that could be contributing to his inability to stay asleep, I did some searching and read up on Wonder Week 46 (a.k.a. Mental Leap 7 - The World of Sequences). I won't go into the details right now (I'm too tired), but may try to post more about it later. For now, I just want to say that knowing such a thing exists does not, by any means, fix or improve the situation. Nevertheless, just having something to blame it all on is reassuring. This is normal. This sucks, but it happens. It's been documented, researched, experienced. My baby is not broken. We are not terrible parents for being unable to fix the issue. And most importantly... this too shall pass. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Please.