14 month old DD very grumpy as waking too early

[pamelat]

Hello, hoping someone may have a magic fix.

For 5 months of her life, DD never slept. Eventually we/she managed to sleep 12 ish hours. Usually 630pm - 630am.

Recently she has started waking at 545am which I appreciate it not mega early.

However, she no longer has a morning nap (and if I let her then she refuses her lunch/afternoon one and gets very grumpy by 3/4pm). So we dont do morning naps, she sleeps 12-2ish at lunch.

The problem, especially in this last week, is that she is very very tired. By 8am even she is tired having woken too early which makes for a grumpy me and grumpy DD.

So, does anyone know how I can gently encourage her to sleep until 630/7am ish?

Or maybe the clocks changing will fix our litte problem?

A friend suggested that I simply refuse to get her up until 7am but I tried 5 minutes of leaving her in her cot and she changed "Mama" to screaming for me. I can't do that.

Haave you tried giving her just a quick short nap of 20-30 mins in the morning to get her out of the grumpy mode?

Do you think if she had a very short morning nap then she might go down for her afternoon nap a bit later and then be able to last maybe until 7:30pm, sleep 11/12 hours and hopefully get up at a more decent hour?

I have a similar problem with DS and I'm really hoping that the clocks changing will help.

Thinking of getting blackout blinds to coincide with clock change as well...

How much sleep does she have in the day?

One thing that has been suggested to me is gradually leaving them longer and longer in the mornings (just a couple of extra minutes each day maybe?) which does seem to have helped. DS actually woke at about 5:20am but burbled until about 6am when we finally got up.

Didn't get to sleep any longer of course, but at least I got to stay in bed until I had to get up.

nappyaddict, hi, unfortunately any morning nap at all (even tried 10 mins one day) means that she will not sleep for the rest of the day, until 5pm when I dont want her to go down. She gets tired very easily but does not realise that sleep is the solution.

I once left her for 2 hours in her cot one lunch "playing" after a morning nap day.

She sleeps probably 11 to 11.5 hours at night and between 2 to 2.5 hours at lunch. Sometimes I worry this is not enough for her.

I'm right there with you pamelat. There's a few things that might help the early waking -

1. Wake to sleep technique - basically waking them an hour before they are waking up normally, then this jolts them out of their sleep pattern and they sleep for longer
2. No carbs at tea-time - it's something about the carb turning into sugar overnight and this wakes them up.

DS has been waking early for the last 2 and a half months, he's 14 months too. I couldn't really try 1) that well as he varies too much on when he wakes up (between 4 and 6.30). The last few days I have tried 2) (giving tea of sausage casserole & Veg, i.e. no pasta, rice or bread, for e.g.) and had 2 mornings start after 7 and 2 mornings at 5.45 - so I'm persevering with it as I think it is helping some mornings!

My friend's little boy has literally a cat nap of 5 mins. I didn't mention it before as I thought it was quite uncommon for something as short as 20-30 minutes to affect afternoon sleep but obviously not if both your dd and her ds have the same problem. She had tried 10-15 mins which didn't work and then tried 5 mins out of desperation thinking it wouldn't work but it did.

Pamelat - maybe she needs to cut down on her lunchtime nap to say 1.5 hours? DS2 is 15 months and if he has about an hour to an hour of a half at lunchtime he will usually sleep 12 hours at night, any more than this and he is up before 6am. Could you also try putting her to be nearer 7ish, she might tag that half hour onto her morning sleep? I have found with my 2 that as soon as they start to wake up early it is a sign they need to cut down on their daytime sleep. HTH

Thanks everyone

Firststeps, she is still tired after 2 hours (I let her wake up as and when she pleases. Yesterday it was 1.5 hours and she was grumpy all afternoon, the day before it was 2.5 hours and happy baby all day).

I put her down earlier last night as she was so so grumpy and she slept 6pm - 6am but has been awful all morning.

Am not ruling out teething as she is quite "boisterous" at the moment, she was head butting me this morning and then laughing and then crying ..... she is having a frustrated phase I think?

I have tried putting her down at 7 or even 730pm but she wakes earlier, say 545/6am and its not enough sleep for her.

I might try the waking her at 430 or 5am thing and see how we get on?!

I think a 2 hour nap is fine for a 14 month old baby and also the 6:30pm bedtime. If she is grumpy in the mornings from waking up so early a 5 minute cat nap can work wonders. The wake to sleep method worked for DS to stop him waking at 4:45 and closer to 6am.