What are you actually supposed to do when your child wakes at 3:45am???

My brother had this problem with his first child. Tried absolutely everything for a month's and months, and eventually just accepted it. They bought some good blackout curtains for their own room and started going to bed themselves at 8pm.

They learnt to love 4am, and just lived like that for the next 18 months. Eventually they all went on holiday involving a timezone change and that reset their son's body clock, and suddenly he started sleeping civilised hours.

We got a gro clock for our DC around a similar age. We read the book religiously every night, I can still recite the bloody thing!! It was a brilliant visual, they'd wake up and we hear them say 'no sun' and go back to sleep.

We started off with setting it around 5.30-6am and gradually moved it to 7am.

It worked wonders for years, I think because they could just look at it quickly from bed they didn't get up and wake themselves up fully so tended to just go back to sleep.

Well, what i did when mine was like this at the same age was fork out for a sleep consultant! They advised some tweaks to the day schedule and controlled crying. However we didn't end up with any crying as I found that if I didn't really engage and left the room, DS stayed in bed happily enough on his own and eventually went back to sleep! So my question to op is, is your ds actually crying? It's not your job to 'get' him to go back to sleep. He needs to do that himself. If he's awake but not massively crying, leave him to it.

Unfortunately I'm not sure the same things work for different children and for some children nothing seems to work at all! Ideas from me:

We had some success with the picking up and putting down again multiple times without engaging until he went back to sleep (not the same as leaving to cry).

My friend had some sort of app where you log naps and wake ups and it tells you what time to put them to bed. It worked for her. I think one day it said put to bed at 5.45pm or something ridiculous and it worked on that particular night!

Pay some sort of professional!

He wouldn't have slept in our bed anyway but cosleeping would be absolutely last resort for me.

We had a terrible sleeper but I would say that about your son's age he just suddenly got it and has never been up before 6.30 / 7 in all the years since. He was going to bed earlier than 7 at that point.

We did rotate early mornings between us so I'm hoping you're not doing all this yourself.

You have my sympathies. I promise it won't be forever. ETA At 19 months I guess you're probably not that far off him having a proper verbal understanding about not getting up.

My eldest done this OP. No matter if you stay in the bedroom or in the Livingroom, try keep it dark. So no TV/loud interactive toys. Keep it quiet time until around 6:00am. It’s tough but the light mornings will ping him awake. Hopefully it corrects itself soon.

We tried the treat it as a night wake thing extensively. It didn't work for us because for my kids, it simply didn't feel like a night wake up, it felt like morning, I don't think it works for very hardwired larks.

We did sleep training for night wakings and it worked really well but for the mornings, it did not. Mine went through a phase of 3:45/4 but more normally it was 5ish.

What did work for us was a combination of gro clock and Tonie box, essentially training them to entertain themselves in their bedrooms. We had the gro clock initially set for something really achievable like 5 and then gradually pushed it to 6:45. When they woke up, we would point to the clock, and leave them to listen to their tonie box until the sun on the clock was up.

It never made them sleep later but it did help us sleep later!

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that he may need to nap longer during the day. I would suggest a longer nap of 2 hours after lunch. For many little ones it is the case that sleep begets sleep. Hang in there!

What are you doing when they wake?

You need to be very very boring.

Sympathies.. this will pass...
I'd drop the night breastfeed and keep him up later.

OP someone mentioned a gro clock, tried that too without success. Will post it to you if you like! Don’t know what to do with it as plug is different where I live so charity shop is no good!

I had this, nothing I tried made any difference. So I stopped the night time breastfeed so that at least the block of time I was asleep was undisturbed, and me and DH took it in turns to get up. Eventually it gradually got later and later, until now they get up between 6-7am.

I took them into my bed and we all went back to sleep.

Can you do what I used to do when mine woke super early which is bring them in my bed and pretend to be asleep so they cuddled up and went back to sleep with me? Room was child safe anyway so if they played around a bit on the bed it was fine but after 10 mins in the dark 'on their own' (IE me there but 'asleep") they always got bored and went to sleep; Never failed.

I did this. Essentially I was the dullest woman on the planet to my daughter between bedtime and 7am. Cuddly, but dull.

I would stop the breastfeeding. I don't agree with this cuddled back to sleep. Just keep saying go to sleep. I used to say it's the middle of the night we are all asleep. But your child is a bit young to understand.

This happened to me. Lasted three or four months. One of us just got up at that time, and then they went to bed earlier.

Leaving him to cry wasn’t for us. Weaning didn’t help. He was just awake. It would have made no difference what we tried… he wanted to play. We’d bring him downstairs; get him breakfast and set him up to play, and then either play with him or lie next to him.

Its tough but it passes!

Keep it dark and boring. Stay upstairs. No getting up and playing. "Its sleepytime/nightime" on repeat.

They won't like it but if you give into it you are teaching their brain its ok to wake up now and reinforcing it.

Just put back in bed and say it's night time, on repeat. Offer water not milk. Just be prepared to go back and forth offering comfort words. It been a hard few nights but worth it in the long run. Good luck and you doing so well x

I would leave them as much as possible. Dark, no talking, no toys. Encourage reliance on blankets and teddies for comfort.
And never ever bring into your bed until you are ready to start your day. For us that was 7am.

I bought a gro clock - set it for the time I wanted them to get up. Made a big deal of it turning yellow meant it was wake up time and we could come out of room. If they woke before then I would go into the room, sometimes lay on the floor for hours, doing shhh, cuddles, rocking , reiterating clock is blue so is sleepy night time. 3 nights of this and she got it.

It then came on holiday and everywhere as she got older knew she could come out when it was yellow and anything g before was go back to sleep or lay very quietly in bed/ go back to bed if you need toilet etc

Best £30 ever

I actually work with someone who gets in with them 😆

Agree

I have a 19mo who is sleep trained. She cried for 3 nights and slept through from the 4th. Either sleep train or suffer because it's harder as they get older. Seriously. Also he's waking to BF which is unnecessary at this point, I would cut that out.

I remember the 18 month sleep regression being the WORST of them all. I really struggled to cope with this one and it felt like it would never end. I have no tips because nothing we tried helped DD go back to sleep until it passed so would say just do what you have to to get through it! Keep some strong coffee in the house and have an early bedtime yourself in preparation. It will pass x

I think they all go through a stage of this. I told mine very firmly it's night time ssh and plonked them in bed with me.
I do remember once when he woke up early at 4am and wasn't resettling . We both had to get to work for 7am. So I took him shopping at a 24 hour Tesco that's normally a bit far to get to . It was amazing. So easy to get everything at that time. After that busy start he was shattered by the end of the day too so went off to sleep early. I do remember being delighted for years that the plan went well .