Or is 4am a ridiculous time to get up?

[Cinocino]

Someone tell my baby!!

A month into 4 am wakes 😩
cooing, chatting and up for the day despite about 8 hours of broken sleep max.
5am I think I could do, wakes in the night I’m prepared for but night wakings and a 3:50 start!!! I’m dead.

Shes 7 months and getting 1 or 1.5 hrs of daytime sleep top s!

I’m torn because I feel like she would definitely go down earlier as she’s usually been up for 5/6 hours from the end of her nap and by the end of the evening I’m definitely holding her off it feels like.
And I do think it’s something to do with her body clock at the minute rather than the total time slept iyswim. So I think if she went down at 6 she would still wake at 4 and if she went down at 8 she still wakes at 4.
But is a 6pm bedtime reinforcing it in the long run??
I lost the manual for my baby, who has the spare?? 😂

The more sleep a baby has the better sleep they'll have. But how do you do that when they don’t actually do the sleeping bit!?

She has 2 naps, has for over a well month as she’s nosey and the 3rd nap would need to be on the nursery run and she refuses to nap outside in the pram or the carrier at that time of day.

Sympathies op.

All mine wake up at 5am sometimes the oldest 9 wakes up 6, 7 if super tired. My toddler will sometimes do a 3 or a 4 😴 it's pretty soul destroying
You do get used to it. On the upside we've never been late for school and we are never in a big rush due to time. We've always been up for what feels like an entire day before 9am😂 getting up early for a holiday is easy peasy. I've never had to drag them out of bed 😂

You're not alone. It does suck but one day we will get our lay ins back.

For mine it doesn't matter what time they go to bed it's either early and wake up early but fully rested. Or go to bed later wake up early but grumpy 😬

Absolutely normal for a while. We had it for about four months.

He's now 6am sharp. Today it was 4:45, just for fun.

Just roll with it. You can't control everything about their sleep, despite all the well-meaning advice various places give.

My son got into this habit when he was about a year old, except it was 3 am. I decided I was not going to wait for it to resolve itself, so we spent three nights sitting in his room, and gently laying him back down as soon as he stood up and started chattering. This was relentless the first night; then less so the second; then the third he woke up and settled himself back to sleep. He never had any problems after that ... and in fact, now he's 17, I can't get him up in the mornings during the holidays!

Firstly I love your tone in these posts - it’s exasperated but also seeing the humour in it so well done on that front!
At 7 mo I used to strongly encourage an afternoon nap at around 3/3.30 by doing a contact nap, dummy in, lights off, white noise on, and me watching a show on mute with subtitles once he was asleep 😂! It meant he had a bit more energy in the tank and didn’t get overtired. That said, he still does split nights 2/3x a week at 3 years old so what do I know lol. Our 2am chats about whether monkeys have 4 arms or 4 legs are actually quality tbf.

ooh I felt this one OP, my second was a 4am riser for ages. Good news, he’s now a 6am riser!

Honestly I think you cause more stress for yourself trying to change it than just coping with it. Have you got a partner at home to alternate early morning wakes with? That’s how I coped!

How soon after waking does she go down for a nap? Often if they’re not tired enough they’ll only do 30/40 minutes, but stretching it a little longer can get a longer nap out of them. One of the most common reasons for early wakes is overtiredness, would she do contact naps or naps in a carrier to get a bit more daytime sleep?

I have a nearly 10 month old and we’ve had real ups and downs with her sleep, just managed 4 day’s in a row of after 6am wakes, which feels momentous, but now I sleep so poorly after about 3 as she had a fair while of night wakes around then.

My LO is also SO sensitive to light in her room - the light on the monitor has a bit of blu-tac on it, and there’s fitted blackout blinds behind blackout curtains! I even found recently that (very little) light round the door was contributing to earlier wakes, so I’ve made the whole landing as dark as I can, which (ridiculously) has made a difference.

I’m sure it’ll all soon be a rose-tinted memory!

@MightyGoldBear On the upside we've never been late for school and we are never in a big rush due to time.

I’ll cling onto the victory of never having to set an alarm!

She might need a bigger gap between her last nap and bed time to build sleep pressure

How is she in the mornings after waking so early? When it is her first nap?

Bigger than 6 hours at 7 months??

She fell asleep when I was rhythmically stirring pasta sauce the other evening while I was waiting for her bottle to cool.

I think maybe it’s the transition from 3 - 2 naps that may be contributing too? Too overtired with only 2 due to the short naps and long gap, but not enough time in the day to squeeze 3.

The only saving grace is when she’s really not going back over in the morning I chuck her out to DH. After doing 9pm-5am and dealing with night wakes on top of the ridiculous start come 5am I’m clocking out!!

You have to sometimes, OP!
It's a ridiculous time, but you get through it when absolutely necessary!
☕💛💤

I wake up at 4am everyday - it's not because I am "bright"...

Mine did this, I found him getting two naps to add up to 2 or 2.5 hours during the day actually helped him sleep at night, though he's still not perfect at nearly a year! He still gets up half 6ish but much more civilised than the early mornings!

Then definitely try putting her down earlier especially if she's had shit naps during the day.

I know it sounds counterintuitive but all the sleep consultants I'm following (I know, I know) say to put them down earlier, at this age that helps rather than hinders early wake-ups.

If you are putting dc down at 6 that’s 10 hours which is a long time at that age without a drink. The best advice my mum ever gave me is that you”ll get them sleeping at one end of the night but not both: put them down early and they will wake early, keep them up later snd they will sleep in. I found it much easier to slow the bedtime routine for a baby and have them up after other dc have gone to bed ( quiet feed etc) and down about 8 or 9pm. Seems to me 9pm would push the window 9 to 7 which is about what ours did and it worked for us. Even 8 to 6 is better than 6 to 4.

It starts to get light at 4 am and the birds start tweeting. Is there a bedroom window open? Do you have the the blackest of blackout blinds and curtains? They can still let light in at the outside edges so if you’re desperate double sided tape or sticky Velcro and tape them to them to the walls either side.

They do. But I found mine slept about 10 hours at a stretch so it’s when you want it. The longer sleep comes a bit later. It’s easy to pull bedtime back when they are bigger: just start it in the winter when it’s dark and take them somewhere that afternoon to wear them out for a few days. It’s easier to manipulate thd battery of sn older child as they can do things like run about.

Dts were like this it was torture. They're 13 now and still up at the crack of dawn. I'm waiting for the switch to teenagers that won't get up!

Yes. I’d definitely put her down an hour later in this case.

If she's just coping then i would try leaving her for a bit and see if she goes off again. You could give her some milk if not and then see if she will settle back down. I think 6 am is reasonable to start the day.

This reminds me of a friend who had children like this, she'd turn up on my doorstep at 9am on a Saturday with a cake she'd baked and decorated that morning and look very perplexed at us still in our pyjamas. Nine was the afternoon for her, she spent years going to bed immediately after dinner at 5pm.

I’m not, I’m saying there have been nights where she has fallen asleep at earlier at say 6:30 then nights where she’s maybe managed a slightly later nap and the evening gets away while getting the baby and toddler ready for bed and by the time she’s finished her bottle and gone down it’s closer to 8, but it’s never made a difference to when she wakes. She doesn’t do 6-4 or 8-6, she wakes at 4 regardless of bedtime.