The sentence "In my opinion children can cry a little and nod back off in the space of 30 minutes, but if they were woken because there was an intruder in the bedroom going back to sleep really would be improbable, unlikely and implausible." is your own opinion and understanding is it not?
Correct me if I'm wrong but you didn't produce that quote from Madeleine AFAIK.
Now that is what I believe is at odds with what Kate is saying. OK she does end up using the 3 words (improbable, unlikely and implausible) but in a completely different context. She is talking about the kids being on their own but you have said "if they were woken because there was an intruder in the bedroom" so they are not alone in your scenario. Different contexts IMO.
Kate McCann tells us she believes an abductor either entered the children's bedroom or tried to on Wednesday evening.
She believes it happened because her daughter told her two children cried on Wednesday when the parents were out.
When her daughter first told her about it she didn't really believe her though. She didn't believe that her children would go back to sleep without being soothed.
So why did she go from finding it highly unlikely to believing it happened? What changed? Nothing changed is the answer. If it was unlikely before it's still unlikely for the very same reasons.
it didn’t seem very probable. As I’ve said, not only did they rarely stir at all at night, but if they did it was hardly ever, and I mean ever, before the early hours. If they had done so on this occasion, it would mean they’d woken up, cried for a while, calmed themselves down and fallen asleep again – all within the space of half an hour. Or
forty-five minutes, if it had been after our last check.
Children usually need some soothing back to sleep once they’ve woken, especially if two of them are awake and upset at the same time, and it seemed highly unlikely they’d have gone through all these stages without one of them overlapping with one of our checks. It wasn’t impossible, but it seemed implausible. [madeleine]
As I said, in my opinion children can nod off again after crying a little bit, but not if they woke up to find an intruder standing over them! That is definitely highly unlikely.
it is my belief there was somebody either in or trying to get into the children’s bedroom that night, and that is what disturbed them. [madeleine]