Early waking AGAIN!!! 7 month old DD..

[teena111]

Hi I have a 7month old dd

I know there are countless posts on EW and how to stop it and I have read them all, and about the morning nap being the general cause too!!! but I need to know whether what I am about implement is right!!

She wakes generally at 5.30am. I ignore her till 6 then BF her. Breakfast at 7. By 7.30-7.45am she is ready for her morning nap. This is generally the longest and from everyting I have read on here is an extension of night sleep and prob causing the waking! It seems I need to put her down at 9 / 9.30am for about an hour and try to get the 2nd nap to be the longest.

How? Do I just keep her up one morning till 9? (She will be exhausted and then REALLY need a long nap) , and then wake her up after an hour and then put her down at 12.30?? And just keep on this schedule for a week or 2 until it falls into place? Or do i wake her up after an hour of going down as normal (like 8.30/8.45am) and then put her down at 11.30 and keep pushing the times back by 10 mins each day until we reach the right times?
She generally has breakfast at 7, lunch at 12, and tea at 5, and bed by 7. (And wakes 1/2 in night for comfort feedi think ) But as the day starts so early she is sometimes ready for bed and soo tired by 6/6.30pm so I put her to bed which i also know means she is ready to start the day at 5.30!! But its too early !! She used to sleep until 6.45 but I found the 3rd nap was becoming a battle so thought perhaps she was transitioning from 3 to 2 nap day and to prevent OT I put her to bed early meaning earlier wake up and this has no offset everyting!

so just start at 9am 1st nap or slowly push it back?? how long does it take?!!
thanks so much!

[emeraldgirl1]

teena - I don't know the answers to any of your questions I am so sorry BUT I have EXACTLY the same problem and am desp hoping someone can help us!!

5.45 is the wake up time here and it is miserable... She then goes back for a sleep at 7.15 and has exactly half an hour but is then exhausted all morning until a second 30/40 min nap an hour and half after the first one...

I too would love to know how to get this right! Keep her awake at 7.15 no matter what? I don't think there is any way I could get her to go til 9... and then I fear she would just wake after half an hour anyway as is her pattern and be cranky and overtired for her next nap which would then occur earlier than it currently does (12ish) and then therefore be shorter...

HELP ME!!

Teena, it is tough isn't it??? THe early waking is such a tough one psychologically... plus am desp to solve it before it gets wintry and then it'll be like hell on earth at 5.45 instead of pleasant-ish with the sun coming up... :(

[emeraldgirl1]

Oh, and teena, like you I have tried an earlier bedtime (well, I had to as she was so exhausted by then from the EW!!) and all it means is that she wakes half an hour earlier than she used to... grrrrrrrrrraaaaaaarrrrggggggggh

[teena111]

that sounds exactly the same as me!! i cant see how i could keep her up... but pushing it back means it'll take 4eva too! but i guess persevere!?? DD stays awake bout an hr and half only after 1st nap as yes so tired , so down again at 10.30am /11ish which is ridiculous!!

[loveisagirlnameddaisy]

We had this problem with DD and have it now with DS, the only thing I could do with DD was to stretch the MN later each day and the same with the lunchtime nap. It's hard and it means you have to be consistent so any time I wanted to go out in the car outside these times was a nightmare. It did work eventually.

The alternative is to accept the early wakings and go with the flow. DS is now 14 months and is only on one nap a day (different to DD who was still on 2 naps) but it happens too early (so I am told) which prolongs the EMW. But how the hell I get a child to stay up for 6 hours until his LTN is beyond me.

[valiumredhead]

I had that for 3 years, just had to go with it. Its a killer though

[mewkins]

Yes I would try to stretch it by a little each day. The baby whisperer book literally says to do anything you can to distract and stretch the time out. It is painful and an effort to keep a tired and grumpy baby from nodding off but it does reset the baby's sleep patterns. Eg. If your dc wakes at 5.30am and normally naps at 7.30am, stretch the nap til 7.45 the next day same the day after, then 8am the day after that.

I would also not be temptef to let them make that a long nap (it really did us no favours in terms of early waking) but keep to 45mins or so.

[loveisagirlnameddaisy]

So rather than keep the one nap, should we go back to 2 and make the first one the short one and encourage a longer lunchtime nap? I've read so much conflicting stuff - sometimes you hear that it's the 2 naps which causes the early waking and other times you hear that it's the early long nap which does it. Can't work out what to do!!

[mewkins]

I would stick with two naps. As I understand it, the morning nap is an extension of night time sleep (which is why that should be the shorter nap) and the lunchtime nap should be an absolute max of two hrs and finish before 3pm at the latest. I am not an expert but read many many sleep theories when my dd was smalller and this is the general consensus. X

[Wiggy29]

Curious to see how folks got on with trying to delay the nap time?

DS generally goes down 19:00, wakes once/twice in night (sometimes feeds at 3ish), wakes at 5:15-30, then asleep by 7 for 45mins (by which point I need to get stuff sorted for ds getting up-grrrr), then naps again at 9:45 for about an hour, then usually half an hour around lunch time and 30 mins at 17:00! He's shattered when he wakes in the morning, sometimes if I give him a feed in the dark he goes back over but often he just wants to chat for half an hour... before realising he's exhausted still, yawning for 30mins then falling asleep!