1 year old now waking at 5.30 as standard....HELP.

[PaulHollywoodsSexGut]

Morning (or is it afternoon yet)

DS is 1 year old and has now taken to waking for a feed at 5:30am and that’s him up for the day.

He shares a room with DD who is nearly 3 and this means she is woken now approx one hour too early every day.

It’s messing with us all as both children are exhausted by 7:30am and get fractious and angry. On weekends we take them a run in the car to chill them out/get an hours nap in but in the week it makes for a tough start to their nursery day.

It may also be worth mentioning that DS is so so close to walking and has suddenly taken to an extra milk feed (cows) at 9:30pm. He is also now chinning 700-800ml of cows milk a day on top of three square meals and snacks (banana, breadsticks, yoghurt).

His sister also did the same thing around this age re milk but the “night” feed and 5:30 waking is doing all of our heads in.

has anyone experienced similar and how did it sort itself out?

We are slightly at our wits end with the whole house now up at 5:30 and shattered to buggery by 8.

What time is he going to bed. DS1 simply needs less sleep than an average child and if we put him to bed at the 6:30 his friends were going to bed at 1 he’d have been up by 5:30...

What is his daytime sleeping like? Contrary to what I had thought when DD was having this issue I read up on sleep and found an interesting discussion about the balance between cortisol and melatonin:

If the child doesn't get enough daytime sleep then by the time they go to bed in the evening their levels of cortisol have risen and, even if they go to sleep ok, that cortisol can curtail sleep.

Since reading this I've really invested in DD's daytime naps and it has definitely paid off.

Ah yes, here’s his typical day:

Up at 5.30am
Milk and Toast 5:30am
Morning snack 9.30am
Lunch 12
Nap 1:30 - 2:30pm
Snack or light tea 4pm
Evening meal 6pm
Milk and bed 7pm
Bonus milk when he wakes raging 9:30pm

YES @ineednewshoes

I have read this too.

So the three days he is at nursery it can be as little as 1hr in the day. Not enough. He’s shattered by teatime.

The other 4 days he will have a turbo nap around 8:30-9:15, an hour or so at lunch and he will sometimes have a snooze in the pram when I’m out around 4ish (but this is becoming obsolete).

Still blatantly canvassing for replies

This is pretty much my son and always has been... I think early waking is quite normal in children? Sometimes he will sleep til 6.30 or 7 (he is 17mo now) but there is no rhyme or reason as to why. He used to wake at 4am but that seemed to resolve itself with time. We do his nap in the morning though and I have phased out any sleep after lunch or bedtime isn't until 8pm or 9pm which is way too late as I'm shattered by then.

If your boy was sleeping til later beforehand then hopefully he will go back to doing that. In the meantime maybe put him back in your room so he doesn't disturb your older one? DS is still in our room as he wakes at least once (usually twice/three times) and I can't be doing with prancing back and forth across the landing all night.

I'd move him into your room. Since you have to get up to him at 5-30am anyway, your sleep will be unchanged but at least your other child will be undisturbed.

My DD has been waking at 5am every day , and she is now 9, so don't expect anything to change any time soon !

There is nothing you can do (once you have tried all normal stuff). Kids just wake early. I’ve had two that did it. Just accept it and set you’re life up around it. Alternate days up. Do all your jobs early. Go to bed early. It will end soon enough. Don’t analyse, just accept it. It’s shit.

It’s just that for 11 of this 13 months of life he’s slept until 6/6:30.

I can handle 6am waking but the 5:30 thing is stripping us that little bit too much and it’s messing with DD.

We now have no room for him in our room as we have resurrected the wardrobe where his cot used to be (our room is approx 3x3m) and as he is no longer in his half size cot it wouldn’t fit anyway.

Fuckkkkkkk

Is he sleeping 930pm til 530 am ?
I think that’s actually really good , especially if he’s went to bed at 730 and it’s just a quick wake up for a bottle at 930pm

I have a 1year old
Their routine is roughly this :
Up at 530 straight downstairs
530-8 potter about eat breakfast , put in jumperoo / high chair / let toddle about whilst I get housework and meal prep done
830-10 naps in the pram during the walk to school and back with older DC
10-2 potters about with me whatever I’m doing , shopping / housework / lunch / snacks etc
230- 3 usually sleeps on way to school pick up
Awake until 7 then it’s bath / bottle / straight into bed
Usually wakes around 10 for another bottle also like your DC

All my kids have got up v early regardless of winter / summer / darker mornings
It’s just my normal
I go to bed after the late feed
Also about 50% of the time the baby gets up at 12 or 2 am also on top of the 530 am start

All of mine slept a bit later ( around 7 am ) from age 2 onwards
Only another year for me to go

My DS did this and we kept moving his bedtime back. Now he goes to bed at 20:30 and wakes up at 7:00.

I would only offer water at 530 he will soon stop waking up for it

It is 100% because he is about to walk! Google it! My ds was exactly the same! He started walking at 14 months and transformed into the happiest toddler ever, having been the grumpiest baby ever! He was waking up really early too at 5.30am I think. It is horrendous but you just have to push through it and know that when he starts walking he'll go back to normal and probably even better. Their brains are going crazy just now because it is the biggest skill they will ever learn. It is a tough time, you have my sympathies!

I should also probably mention I’m 10w pg with #3 and megadead by 7pm so to have both children go from 7- nearly 7 (8-7 for DD) sleepers to this hokey is a real slap in the face.

ANYWAY thanks @Emma1609 I’m away to google that now and think I will follow the advice of @DevonshireCreamTea and offer water instead of milk.

I think this is just a phase but it’s really causing issues right now. I do remain hopeful though that things will revert to normal a bit more soon.

We have the same issue here with nursery. At home DD naps on average 2 hours; at nursery it's often as little as half an hour which is nowhere near enough.

As someone who has had a lot of sleep related challenges with my two, and worked closely with a sleep consultant, this is just opinion!

I would say he is overtired. Early waking is a classic symptom of this, and night wakings too due to excess cortisol (stress hormone) being released. I would aim for a 12hr day based on when he's waking. So if he's up at 5:30, bed needs to be at 5:30. Really tough to achieve I know, cuz I've had to do it! Try your best.

This really should work but you will need to be consistent for a couple of weeks. What you do then is move bed time back 10mins at a time, and hope that morning time moves with it!

Naps are important too of course, if he's just on one I would aim for an early lunch then nap no later than 12:30 for 1.5hrs minimum, ideally longer, with 3:00 cut off to get him up to preserve bedtime.

We had a 5am milk problem for a while too, what worked for us was still going with milk at first, but giving it him in his bed, no lights on, no interaction, then leaving him to it until a more reasonable hour. When he started to catch up his sleep dept he stopped waking for it on his own.

Hopefully the early rising will gradually right itself then!

Good luck! I know what it's like, 5:30 sounds ok on paper but doesn't feel it in really life!!!

My eldest did this. I used let him get in bed with us and encouraged him go back to sleep a bit. He usually wouldn't, but I kept some of his toys and books & water bottle beside our bed and he could sit and play beside me while I dozed a bit longer. At 6 we'd get up and make breakfast (my boundary was I refused to get up before 6am). He overgrew it by the age of about 3 and a half.

5.30 is fine, I've been getting up with kids at 5.30 or earlier for 6 years.

My 2.5 year old wakes at 4. Go to bed earlier is my only advice.

Thanks for this @haypanky

Sounds like you’ve got some valuable advice there and I’m in total agreement with those who’ve mentioned him being overstimulated/hyped due to the cortisol issue.

Will try earlier bedtime tonight first, then the milk replaced with water and also try and get nursery to try harder with his naps, not ideal but it’s a plan.

I just can’t get used to 5:30 starts with no attempt to put them right especially after months and months of “normal” (for a Gina Ford baby) sleep. And it’s not fair on DD.

It depends on the individual but for me 5.30am is not an acceptable time to get up. I’d never get used to it. I would work out what time is acceptable (I.e 7am) and treat anything earlier than that as a night waking.

So go in, don’t turn lights on and say ‘it’s still nightime go back to sleep’. So not get them up until 7. Every time you get up, expose them to light, feed them at that time it just reinforces the body clock to wake and be hungry at that time.

It takes a while but worked for us. Also at 1 they may need more sleep in the day, not less. So try that too. We did a 2 hour lunch nap until they were 3.

Please report back OP. We are in a trickier phase for sleep after three illnesses in a row threw evening out. I know I need to tackle it as I've fallen into the trap of taking the easy win at the time (feeding DD when she wakes) but that longer term I'm shooting myself in the foot!

everything not evening!

My 19th month old is an early waker, it's killing me, I'm in bed by 9pm these days. It all started when the clocks went back.
But he is a good napper ! He's up around 5:30 and then back to bed by 9:30-10 o'clock for usually 2 hrs, then again for a power nap of an hour around 3pm, then evening bed at 7:30..
We've tried playing around with nap times, bed times dropping naps even but nothing changes that 5:30 wake up..
On the flip side I get a lot done in the early hours, while he potters around after me trying not to wake my teenagers up, I'd just like to be able to stay awake to watch a film one evening or spend some time with my other half who like me is wrecked and we end up falling asleep on the sofa early evening. usually the woken by the 16 yr old saying go to bed !
I'm just hoping he grows out of it !
My other two where cracking sleepers in ..

I'd just like to be able to stay awake to watch a film one evening or spend some time with my other half who like me is wrecked and we end up falling asleep on the sofa early evening

Oh @51PegasusB

I watched 5/8 episodes of Killing Eve then this
nonsense started.

We’ve been attempting to watch Ep 6 for three weeks now, I just can’t make it past 9pm and DD sometimes doesn’t settle until 8:30 if she’s having a “chatty” night

SO.

Looks like the problem may not be DS but DD....

Up at 5:15 today waking DS in the process.

Yesterday was the longest and most testing day I can remember due to an early start plus all of us being cranky and DS and DD we’re utterly shattered so we put him up at 6 (good idea) and she asked to go up at 6:30.

So tonight, come what may, even if she’s begging for bed I’m gonna have to put her up at 7:30 as she’s definitely got an 11hiur cycle (normally) to what I think is his 12.