Ds wakes dd up at night and early morning and she is permanently knackered and starting school this week

[13lucky]

Hi there, I'm not sure what to do about this and there's probably no easy solution to it but just wanted to have a rant!

I have one dd who has just turned 4 and starts school on Thursday. She has been the most brilliant sleeper since she was very small and has slept through from the age of 3 months pretty much every night. She wakes up between 6 and 7 I think but has a digital clock and knows to wait for 7 before getting up. Brilliant.

I also have a ds who will be 2 in October. He started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks old - great, we thought! However, at 4 months his sleep became and bit random and is still random now. Sometimes he sleeps straight through, other times he doesn't. And he always wakes up between 5 and 6am. The problem is when he wakes up, he's very noisy and I think this wakes up my dd. Last night, for example, he screamed out on 3 separate occasions in the night for about 20 seconds...long enough to wake everyone in the house...but he wasn't really awake - just screaming in his sleep. And so today my dd is exhausted because I reckon he must have woken her up as well. And he then woke for the day at 5.30am and shouted and sang very loudly, again waking everyone up. In the mornings, I do try to go to him and tell him to shush etc which is mildly successful sometimes. But the middle of the night shenanigans, I've no idea how to solve. If it was just me being exhausted, I wouldn't mind so much and would just assume he might get better as he gets older, but I feel so bad for my dd being woken up all the time and don't want her being exhuasted starting school - it's going to be tiring enough as it is.

Sorry for the long rant!

If it hasn't been going on very long, she might not yet be used to DS's early wakings and learnt to blank them out. Have you told her that she doesn't need to wake up when he wakes? That might be enough for her subconscious not to hear him.

Other than that, does he go to bed very early? Getting up for the day at 5.30 is tough on all of you, and if he doesn't need more sleep than that at night I'd think about shifting his routine so that he goes to bed a bit later and sleeps later in the morning, in your shoes.

Thanks for the response castille - the night wakings and the early mornings have been going on for months and months (and months!) so I don't think she's going to get used to it unfortunately.

Wrt the early mornings, he woke between 5 and 5.30 for a really long time but for the past 6 weeks has sometimes been sleeping till 6 or 6.30 - again he is totally random. I don't really want to keep him up longer in the evening as he goes to bed at 7 when my dd does and selfishly I need that time as I am alone with them from 6am in the morning as my dh works long hours. If I thought that would fix the problem, I would obviously do it but ti seems to make no difference what time he goes to bed - he more or less always wakes at the same time.

I'm guessing children shouldn't wear ear plugs??!!

Possibly not...

With young children you usually have to choose between mornings and evenings, sadly. If you do want to try later bedtimes, it has to be significant and permanent but gradual change of routine, not just keeping him up later for a few days.

Other than that I have no other suggestions. I just hope your DS grows out of the screaming & early waking v soon and your DD is awake enough to enjoy school