DD is 19 months old, wakes every morning at 5am. People say she is just an early riser but she wakes up screamingly, throwing herself around cot and is tired and grumpy by 9am.
Try as I might she won't stay in bed longer, she has 1 nap in the day for about an hour - usually 11.30am - 12.30pm, I have to fight to keep her awake until this time, in the week we have activities and classes during the morning, which she looks exhausted through and many have commented how tired she looks but these classes help me keep her up. At the weekend I try to do activities to keep her interest otherwise she falls asleep around 10, wakes at 11 and we have a grumpy, tired afternoon.
She goes to bed for 7pm, we have tried to do later bedtime to see if this affects the wake time but it doesn't, we just have a grumpy child we are trying to keep awake.
On a good night (rare) she will sleep right through to 5am. On an average night she stirs and cries 6-8 times throughout the night, we go through and sush, so early start and broken sleep. On a bad night she will be awake 3-4 times for prolonged periods when we have to go in and out to settle. We never take her out of her room after bedtime and only rarely lift her from her cot if she is really upset or worked up to try to instil messages that it is bedtime. We have tried leaving her to settle herself but she gets more worked up and then we have hours of screaming.
What are opinions/views/suggestions? Everyone I speak to tells me their child sleeps through until 7ish and has done for a long time. Our DD has never improved on the above, of course it has been worse when she was smaller but I hoped we would be getting a bit more zzz by now. Am I being lied to about the sleep thing, am I being unrealistic?
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AIBU to think that we should be getting some sleep by now
mumaa · 12/03/2014 07:18
Thank you all for your responses. Like some fellow zombie mums 
have said, my DD has always been like this, I always felt she was overtired but other than give her every opportunity to sleep I don't know what more can be done, believe me, if I could have forced her to sleep, I would...
When she dropped to one nap I kept her up until 1pm as I was told by a friend that 1pm - 3pm is a good nap time. I managed this for a week, she then literally fell asleep in her lunch 3 days in a row and I couldn't keep her up.
We have let her just do what she wants in terms of sleep also, she will fall asleep at 10am, wake an hour later and then scream if I try to put her down for an afternoon nap, even though is clearly tired. We are talking the kind of screaming that turns to coughing and then retching, we then are past tired and bombing about until bedtime.
In terms of nap time she averages an hour, sometimes 40mins, sometimes 2 hours (though this is VERY rare. Think can count these naps on one hand), more often than not is around an hour, I have tried leaving her to resettle, going in to comfort her, even tried wake to sleep at nap time. Nothing I do seems to affect the time.
I have tried wake to sleep, my DH thought I had lost it, getting up earlier to try to get her to sleep longer, tried this for a week, no affect. We have tried keeping her up later, later dinner, taking her out in the afternoon, torturing her by trying to keep her awake in buggy on way to/from park, no difference, we only managed to do later bed 3 nights in a row before I really felt like all we were doing was just upsetting her as is wasn't affecting the sleep at all.
We've tried pitch black room, night lights sleeping bags, blankets, heating on 30 mins before wake to make cosy, heating off incase too hot, bedtime 'aids' with soft light or sound.
Nothing has made a difference, if she was early riser and not so tired looking I would accept she is an early riser but to me I just feel she is over tired and I always think she looks tired in the morning... She also won't eat breakfast when she gets up until about 8am so I know she isn't hungry, have tried giving her a drink incase thirsty, isn't fussy.
I haven't tried putting her to bed earlier, everyone I have spoken to in RL seems to think I put her to bed too early, I will definitely try this, I am willing to try everything. Thank you all for your suggestions and experience.
It is so frustrating, yes I am tired, but I also hate seeing her look tired, my DN sleeps 12 hours solid and naps for 2 hours every afternoon, my DB has done no sleep training, he just fell into it naturally and he is 12 months older than our DD so I think there is something in some are just naturally sleepers and others aren't.
Any other suggestions I am happy to try and really appreciate all of your experience, I will report back if earlier bed has any success. If you told me to dance outside 20 mins before bed time I probably would! Thanks so much for your responses!! It does help to know am not alone too 
I don't have a car during the day as my husband takes it to work. I've tried putting her in the buggy but doesn't seem to work as there is lots to interest her. Recently i have tried taking her for a walk round the block or to the shops (with her walking) to tire her out, sadly hasn't done anything other than make a trip to the shops REALLY long
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