AIBU to let baby wake at 4?!

[Serabi]

Please help I'm at my wits end.

Baby is 16 months old and sleeps quite well with minimal intervention between 7-4ish.

At 4am we have habitually breastfed and baby would fall happily back to sleep until anywhere between 6-7am.

For the past few weeks baby wakes for the 4 feed and is unsettled and quite awake and active. I spend the next two hours on and off hand holding, patting, shushing, re-feeding until about 6am and then baby falls back to sleep and sleeps solid and then usually I
Have to wake baby up at 8.30/9am.

Any other time they wake up in the night a quick handhold, an offer of water and they're back to sleep easily. But this 4am wake up is a demand for milk and it's the difficulty settling them afterwards. They're still tired because then they crash out until 9am and have to be woken up!

Please help me end this 4am nonsense once and for all. I'm struggling so much and I inevitably fall back to sleep at 6am too and am missing work deadlines and pushing my flexible / understanding childcare help to their limit too!

You could offer milk earlier in the night, and then they might continue to sleep at 4am instead?

Or maybe they are disturbed by needing the toilet in the early morning, and because they have a lower sleep drive by that time, it takes longer to resettle.

I ECed my daughter from birth (including at night), and I found that a lot of wakeups other parents might consider unexplained were to do with needing the toilet.

So they might only rouse briefly in the earlier parts of the night, urinate in their nappy, then go back to sleep easily. But if something like that rouses them at 4am, it's a bigger disturbance.

I always put her on the potty as soon as she wriggled in the night, as if I didn't, she would keep being unsettled until she urinated, then wake up properly because she was uncomfortable, so I'd have to change her training pants anyway (and maybe also put her on the potty as she might not have done it all).

These days (she's 8 now) I still take her to the toilet when I go to bed (some time between 00:00 and 02:00), which I believe stops her waking up too early in the morning needing it. She usually then wakes up between 08:00 and 09:00 am (having gone to sleep around 21:45).

Thanks @rosiejaune that's really interesting. On the odd occasion I've offered milk earlier in the night it causes more wake ups! Baby then feeds at the time before and again at 4am.

I could night wean but I feel like the milk is the only thing vaguely helping back to sleep. But is the night feed encouraging the habitual wake up... vicious circle I think...

I don't have any advice. Both my children have been hideously early wakers, I am.jo stranger to a 4am start. It goes in waves and I've not found anything bit time to change it. You can try not letting them sleep in the morning so it pushes afternoon nap and bedtime back slightly?

No advice but my 10 month old seems to love 4am. My heart sinks when I hear the monitor and check the time, as he's a nightmare to settle at that time.

I suspected I wouldn't be the only one with this issue...

If baby was awake and happy that would be slightly more tolerable than the moany half awake state I get! And then needing to sleep from 6-8.30/9 is madness.

Baby is down to one nap a day now quite comfortably for just over and hour after lunch.