Waking up everyday at 4/5am

[babyjordan]

Hi

My baby boy is 8.5 months and he wakes up everyday all set to start the day between 4 and 5 am. We have tried rocking him back to sleep, giving him a feed (backfires every time because he thinks that its his morning feed and just starts playing as soon as he finishes), cuddling him in bed but he just won't have it. he is sleepy because when I pick him up he falls asleep in my arms but the moment I put him down he wakes up screaming.

He has a pretty good routine in the day. his naps in total are no longer than 3 hours and he goes to bed at 7.30pm and wakes between 1-2 for a feed. he used to sleep really well it 7-7.30 but in the last 3 months it has been more erratic. We have been getting up and starting his day around 5.30 just because we don't want him crying but its getting a bit much now.

He woke up at 4am this morning and we tried controlled crying and he was just fussing till 5am and then he started screaming till 5.45 when we gave up.

Hope its not too late to break the habit.

Any advice will be appreciated

Oh poor you. I do sympathise, been there with DS. Was such a shock as DD was always a great sleeper.

Not sure there is anything you can do about it to be honest - I know there was nothing I could have done, did try everything - and I remember it felt like an age before he was sleeping "properly".

Have you tried a later bedtime?

got a 9 1/2 month DS, almost identical to yours until a few weeks ago.

Can't guarantee any of this will work for you but this is what we did...

The first thing we did is that i stopped breastfeeding him when he woke in the night, he just had water when he woke for a couple of weeks, and DP went into his room to give him this instead of me. This taught DS that if he woke up early, he would not get mommy or her milk. The health visitor had told me that by this age they should not need to feed during the night, and if you refuse to feed them at night you will see a sudden increase in the amount of solids that they will eat, which will mean they soon stop waking in the night, especially if they know they aren't going to get the milk they are used to! (FYI DS actually lost weight between mid June and mid July, when i was still feeding in the night, so all of these changes we did have happened since mid July, and since then he has gone from 20lb 5oz to 22lb 2oz today!)

We then did about a week of DP trying to give him as little water as possible, then giving him no water and just rocking him to sleep. We combined this with making sure that when it was an acceptable time to wake up, we would go into his room, open the curtain/raise the black out blind, say wakey wakey and then go to his cot. When putting him to sleep, we'd say sleepy time, close blind/curtain. We decided that he was allowed to have his breakfast (weetabix) from 6am, but not before. We hoped that he would soon learn there is no point waking any earlier as he won't get milk, or water, or breakfast.

It may seem harsh but we didn't get many tears over it. It's been a couple of weeks now, and gradually he started to wake a bit later, then we had a breakthrough when he woke one day at 5, but then self settled rather than the usual screaming, and then woke again at 7.30, the next day woke at 5, self settled then woke 7, the next day woke at 6, the next woke at 6.30 and the next woke at 6.20.

this may still sound early, but it's way better than waking anytime from 4am, and DP has to be up just after 6 anyhow to get ready for work, which means i'm always awake too, so whilst it'd be nice if DS slept in for longer, it fits in with us if after 6 so not complaining!

We also removed the winnie the pooh dreamshow from his room.

hope this helps!