1 year old sleep - help please!

[mytinyfiredancers]

My just turned one year old has always been a good sleeper (unlike her older sibling). Self settles, regular naps, easy to put to bed.

But the last 12 weeks or so she's been waking earlier and earlier. It's now getting to be around 4:30am and it's just too early.

Routine looks like this:

4-5am awake
6am Breakfast
8am Bottle
9:30- 11:30am Nap
12: Lunch
2pm: Bottle
5pm: Dinner
6pm: Bed
10pm: Bottle (dreamfeed)

I have tried keeping her up later, she is just wiped out and either falls asleep right on the floor or screams her head off so she needs to go to bed when she does. She refuses to have a second nap now to allow for a later bedtime.

She sleep soundly all night, rarely waking. Her routine is ideal really except I cannot hack starting my day between 4 and 5am!! I can't leave her making a racket in bed in the mornings because she'll wake my preschooler and it's not fair for them to be woken at that time when they've got a day at preschool ahead of them. They don't normally wake till gone six.

She doesn't cry when she wakes, but stands up in her cot waving and making happy noises as if to say 'GOOD MORNING FAMILY WAKE UP NOW YOU LAZY BUNCH I AM READY TO START MY DAY!!!'

She is teething, a bit, but nothing major. She eats well, is healthy, happy and fine. She's not hungry, or not immediately anyway as she doesn't eat for a while after she wakes. I change her nappy when she had her dreamfeed so she's never soaking wet.

Any advice on how to tackle this or am I just going to have to ride it out? I do remember my eldest going through a spate of early waking but not like this, or for this long!

I think you can change this. Despite what people say to the contrary it is flaming obvious that putting a child to bed at 6pm could result in child getting up earlier. So assuming you don't want her in bed by 6 pm you can change it

Easiest I think is to takle the nap first, needs to be later, ideally after lunch but try first to have nap at 11 and see how that goes. It should mean she isn't flagging so early and slowly you'll change the pattern

Problem is with her morning nap, she falls asleep in the car on the way home from dropping off her sibling from preschool. So I just scoop her up and put her in her cot and she sleeps for 2 hours.

If I wake her she just screams and screams. I mean understandably, she's been awake for hours and hours by that point!

Weirdly she slept until 5:45 this morning. An anomaly I bet!

Nap needs to be after lunch, ideally 12-2. Whilst she’s having a morning nap she will never wake up later as she’s using it to catch up on overnight sleep. Start new routine on a weekend so no car trip and just do whatever you need to do to keep her awake. Lunch at 1130 then straight to bed.

I agree with NoKnit on the nap thing. Just so I’m not assuming the opposite here, when in the car are you talking and engaging her in singing Etc? That is how I’ve always had to do it to stop mine falling asleep if I wanted to push nap time. I’d start singing nursery rhymes before we get in the car and carry on whilst going home. Fresh air from the windows open etc. My youngest (DS3 age 4) is autistic so doesn’t always engage and will often scream at me if I talk to him and he doesn’t want me to. When he was younger and still napping and we weren’t aware of the ASD, I would take a small snack with me for him to concentrate on. Something that requires concentration like small crackers or breadsticks etc (obviously adapt to the age of your DC). Apologies if you’ve tried any of that already. It’s just small tweaks here and there. She possibly is having a growth spurt in addition to teething and so may settle again at some point.

Another thing I did for my DS3 was to go in and out some hard backed books in his cot Aania he used to be an early riser too. It occupied him for quite a while on a morning and I found that my other two didn’t wake. He is in his own room though which helps.

Hope you find something to help change the pattern.

*as he used to be