Where did my great sleeper go?

First, most of my blog post titles start off as a song in my head. And tonight while I was putting Sophia to sleep I was singing to myself "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone". I have to singing in my head in order to not go mad by the white noise and my arm going to sleep.

Back to the point on hand. WHERE DID SHE GO? We've hit occasional road bumps on the journey of sleep. Where she'd have a rough few days and we'd be golden again. I have tried to instill good sleeping associations. But for the past week and a half Sophia has decided she doesn't have any need to go to bed at night. Since a couple weeks after getting Sophia crib "trained" we've been able to put her down awake and she can put herself to sleep. So what happened? What went wrong? She now can sense when we've walked out of the room and screams that could wake the dead begin.

We've been good about not picking her up out of the crib. (There was an exception, during teething. She needed to be held and I wasn't going to deny her!) Once she's down, she's down until she wakes up in the morning to eat. I will stand in there with her and rub or pat her back. I will sit on the floor so she can see me. At most the longest this used to take was 5 minutes. Now? This can go on for the better part of an hour. And the moment you go to leave the room...she screams.

I am not against "cry it out". I understand the logic for and against it. I think that for some people it works. It's a personal choice that a parent makes based on their comfort and the personality of their child. And I know by not even having to try this method that there's no way it would work for us. When Cody can't be home to help out I sometimes have to take a break and step out of the room for a little bit. In the 2 minutes I am out of the room Sophia's screams become so much that she can't breathe. Obviously CIO won't be a method of helping her sleep that we will be trying. It just doesn't even seem like something that will work for her.

And the kicker to all of this is that she's not a bad ACTUAL sleeper. Once she's out, she's out until she's hungry. Some nights she doesn't wake up at all, usually she wakes up once to eat--and then she goes to sleep easily. I just would like to know why, all of a sudden, the process of going to sleep has become so horribly challenging for her.

Any suggestions on what we should be doing? On what we should change? Words of wisdom? Words of advice?