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Behaviour/development

Help - Baby wakening at 5am for weeks!

8 replies

CSMD · 20/07/2020 09:38

Hi

My 11 month old has been wakening between 4:45 - 5:30 every day for about 10 weeks. If I sush him back it takes roughly 1.5 hours to get him off to sleep and he will maybe sleep until 8am. He has a lunchtime nap of 1.5 hrs and goes to bed okay for 7/7:30 (gets his dinner at 5/6). Total daily sleep is 2.5 hours with 4/5 hours between 2 naps. He doesn't wake throughout night just up really early!

I am at my wits end - we are exhausted as it is so draining trying to get him back to sleep so we usually just get up with him and start our day early. I am scared this will be his routine for his early years. We are in bed at 9 everynight!

I have tried literally everything and nothing seems to work. Darkened room, changed whole schedule, feed on wakening, kept him up later, cut out/cut down naps - nothing works 😓

Is this a habit we need to break? Friends told us to leave him and set an alarm and dont go in until then.

Has anyone been through this, how long did it last and what did you do?

Thanks

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NoKnit · 20/07/2020 15:11

Have you tried reducing to just one nap? That might help

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CSMD · 20/07/2020 20:22

Thanks for reply.

I have tried that for a few days and it didnt make a difference! Its tough trying to keep him awake if hes up from 5am through to his lunch time nap. I also tried cutting lunch nap to 1 hour and it didnt work either 🤔

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Wherethereshope · 20/07/2020 21:57

Have you got blackout curtains? I always find the bright mornings make a difference.

It may be you're at that awkward point of needing less naps but not ready for just one. Can you just take it in turns to get up with him but jeep lighting and stimulus low until 6.30/ 7

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Newbiehere123 · 21/07/2020 01:34

I had to cut my LO's nap down to 1 from around 11 months which helped. Also a pp mentioned about blackout curtains as it's light at 5am which will help. Also with this hot weather now, my LO hasn't been sleeping very well either and keeps on waking up frequently and wide awake at 5am. He woke up at 5am yesterday morning too and will probably tonight as well.

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Donhill · 21/07/2020 05:39

Hi op, my ds1 woke up early (4!) for what felt like aaaaagggggges at that age too and I tried everything as it was just so exhausting. You feel like you have done a full day before breakfast! Cutting down day time naps never worked for us and pushing his bedtime later never changed his wake up time. One thing - there is a sleep section of mumsnet so you could try looking through there for ideas. Just in case you didn’t know it was there (I didn’t). With my ds what was difficult was that by the time I woke up and dragged myself from bed he was fully awake and had been for a while so getting him back to sleep was virtually impossible. So in the end we tried moving a mattress onto the floor next to his cot and I set my alarm for just before when he usually woke up. I then went in and was ready to just lay my hand on him and sush him the moment he sounded like he was coming into lighter sleep and beginning to wake up. The mattress was there so I could lie down when doing this! I think this worked at getting him into another deeper sleep cycle and eventually changed his body clock. My ds is ten now so I have forgotten how many times I had to do this before his sleep pattern changed, but it worked eventually.

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CSMD · 21/07/2020 08:01

Thanks everyone for the advice 😃

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MichelleOR84 · 21/07/2020 20:25

I don’t know if this will help as this happened to me too but my son was 15 months old . He suddenly started waking at 5am every morning . We cut out his morning nap and it was rough the first week or so ( he was so cranky) but then he adjusted. We pushed his afternoon nap forward to 12:30 and then we found he was settling quicker at night and sleeping in until 6:30-7am.

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CSMD · 25/07/2020 21:17

Just to let you know we cut out his morning nap,
moved afternoon nap to 12 and left him for a couple of mornings until 6am and this has done the trick!

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