Ridiculous sleep routine for 23 month old - Help!

[helenhicks]

DD usually wakes up between 5 and 6am which is waaay too early for me, but sometimes (including today) she's up at 4am. Yesterday she slept till 7.15 (but DD1 was up at 6 so still no lie in :( She usually has a daytime sleep which left to her own devices was about 2-3 hours. I've been limiting it to 1.5 hours to try and get her to sleep more at night but it's not working, and then yesterday she wouldn't sleep at all in the day. I put her down like normal but she was just awake in her cot for a couple of hours (not unhappy, just awake).

If she wakes early I feel I have to get her up as if she wakes DD1 then I've got a grouchy 3 year old all day, and also my husband drives quite a lot for work and I don't want him to be too knackered on the motorway. (DD1 used to wake any time after 6 but I'd never go to her until 7 as she'd just chatter away to herself). So I'm up at stupid o'clock trying really hard to keep her quiet, and getting more and more annoyed with her. Today she's been pretty much crying since 4am (just for attention I think, she'll be 2 in a couple of weeks) and I'm fast losing the will to live.

She goes to bed without too much trouble at 7pm and is sometimes awake in the night but relatively easily settled. We've tried disturbing her at 10pm to see if this'll push her through but it doesn't work.

So my question really is how can I make her sleep in longer in the mornings please?

I'm going to lurk hoping for the answer too, my DD is 3 now and still wakes at night and at 6am!

We've just started using a Gro-Clock, and not sure if it's that or just the end of a bad patch/end of teething or what but our early waker (5am or earlier) is now either waking at 6 and chattering til 7 when I go and get him or on good days sleeping until 7.15 (Lovely!). He's 23 months as well, 1.5 hours usually during the day. I find that if he doesn't sleep at all during the day his nighttime sleep is worse.

Thanks, I've just looked at the gro-clock and think we'll give that a try. A bit of a bummer that we'll probably have to get 2 as DD1 is bound to want one and they're really expensive Mind you if they'd both stay in bed until gone 7 that'd be priceless...

I did the opposite of what you'd think would work, ie putting the child to bed later, and put DS to bed earlier - 6pm. It worked! After a while I moved it back to 7pm (gradually) with no problem. He still had a decent nap (say 1pm-3pm).