This whole scenario bothers me. Is it *normal* for it to take two adults to *console* a healthy two year old for three hours? Because when our kids were little, no way would the two of us be up all night with a 2 year old. The only time the two of us were up all night like that, was if one of our children was deathly ill. Asthma, high fever, trouble breathing, etc. Other than that, one of us would settle the kid down and go back to bed. I remember with our first baby, she started waking up in the middle of the night and I gave her a bottle of juice to fall back asleep. Told the pediatrician about it. That 'this had to stop', she's waking up every night for a bottle now. She was much younger than 2 at the time, because by the time she was 2 we had another baby. Anyway, my pediatrician chuckled and said 'as long as you keep providing that bottle in the middle of the night, she'll keep waking up for it.
He said 'stop giving her the bottle, she'll fuss a couple nights, and then stop waking up and you can go back to sleeping again. Needless to say, I didn't make that mistake with the next two babies. I just don't get this 'up all night, for hours, consoling Katie?'