20 month old has started waking in early hours

[shanjayne]

My 20 month ds has been sleeping through for absolutely ages (since about 3 months I think with a dream feed and probably since 6 months without that). We've had great nights until recently. A couple of months ago she started sporadically waking before 6 and then waking her 3 year old brother up who sleeps in the same room as her. This became more regular and for the last 3 weeks or so she has been waking almost every night around 5am. Tonight has been a record low with her waking at 3am.

We've tried just leaving her to get herself off to sleep but she ends up wailing enough to wake the whole household up. I've tried going in, not talking to her but just lying down on the floor and holding her hand ... this worked the first and second times but that's all. We've tried bringing her into our bed and eventually we do all get off again but none of us have very good sleep then as she pats me and her daddy until she falls asleep.

Tonight I've given up and brought her downstairs. It's what she always wants ... when we go in to her when she wakes she just points at the door / stairs. We've come down now and she's just sat on my knee with a cuddly toy. She pointed at the tv and I said no, cbeebies is asleep. Eventually I got her to lie down on my lap and she's just fallen asleep. I'll give it a few mins then try to put her on the sofa and go back to bed.

We just can't keep this up ... we're absolutely shattered and it's not fair on ds1 either. We're trying to get the spare / junk room sorted for her to move in to, which seems a shame as they love sharing a room, but frankly I'm too tired at the moment to do anything to the room, and not convinced that will help as she can still wake everyone up from there.

Any ideas anyone, PLEASE?!

Thanks,

[shanjayne]

Bump!

[Broms]

It sounds like she is definitely still tired when she wakes early and is struggling to re-settle. So you don't disturb ds maybe get the spare room ready and you grab her as soon as she wakes and go in there and try and get her to settle with you there. By going downstairs she will think its the start of the day so avoid if you can.

Also another thought how much daytime sleep does she have? Maybe she's hitting the point when she's starting to need slightly less.

I'm afraid nothing much has ever worked for us and my ds is an incredibly early waker but the most success I have had with all the different things I've tried is grabbing him and lying with him in the HOPE he drifts off again. We regularly starts days at 4.30am but that is not really what you want to hear.

Good luck - I hope she goes back to her normal pattern soon - horrid for you when are not used to it.