Up from 3am with baby

[Koli]

Help! My 9mo is waking up ridiculously early. 3am this morning and I ended up getting up with him at 4.30 so my partner could sleep.

Question is what do I do with his daytime napping? Should I try keep him up until his morning nap around 9? I fed him at 5.30 and started to fall asleep but i’ve Kept him up.

He is bf and wakes up 3 times a night and usually gets up between 5-6am. I am exhausted

That would be considered a night waking in our house and I would leave her to it or resettle in the cot (no lights on etc.). Anything before 6:30 is the night here but she has a dummy and is happy to wait for us if she wakes early. She sometimes wakes as early as 6:00 because I hear her chattering before she reinserts her dummy. Anything before that and she goes back to sleep after a while. How quickly are you going in? Could you leave and see if he'll resettle and go back to sleep? There is no way my 1yo would be awake at 3 and not nap until 9.

Both of mine went through phases of that. Just being awake for a couple of hours at night. My solution was bedsharing and trying to pretend to be asleep. Didn’t really work but at least I was lying down and comfy. They grew out of it. No way would I get up at that time. Do you have a spare room you husband could go to if baby is playing silly buggers at night?

yeah it’s night waking! I leave him for a bit - between 5-10 mins, but he just gets louder and more upset. I took him into bed for 1.5hr but he was just crying/moaning and I knew my partner was getting frustrated.

We have another room my partner could sleep in or the sofa!

If your baby wakes through the night, how long would you leave them if they were crying? I fear he’s perhaps not able to self settle.

Well it’s 7.30am and he’s starting to fall asleep through breakfast. I’m worried if I let him sleep now, this will become our new routine.

Agree with PP - I just to pop mine in bed with me, OH used to sleep in the spare room. At least you can doze a bit and be comfy in bed until he goes back to sleep. I found trying to keep to a nap schedule important - if my DS had too many naps or fell asleep at the wrong time, his night time sleep would be worse and on it continued.

What is his routine usually?

My DS is 12 months and went through a stage of doing that. If he was tired earlier than his nap then I put him down to sleep. Yes that meant his nap was longer than usual but his night was shorter than usual, plus it got us back on track for the rest of the day.

If your DS goes down for naps and goes to sleep at bedtime on his own then he does know how to self settle. If he is waking at 3am, myself I would think hunger. Look at what he is eating, if he is getting enough protein in the day.

Thanks for the replies. Usual routine is:
0500-0600 awake but don’t get up with him until 0630
0930 - nap between 30-45 mins
1200 - lunch
1300 - nap can be 20 minutes or 2hrs if i’m really Lucky!
1800 - dinner
1900 - bed

He’s up to feed 2-3 times a night.

Most of the time falls asleep when i’m Feeding him which I guess We need to get out of. I tried several times to feed him when he got up at 3am but wasn’t interested until 5.30am

Do you always feed to sleep? Maybe working on the self settling would help for night wakings when you know he's not hungry.

Yes it usually happens that way. Especially before bed and through the night.

@Koli at 9m he needs 2-3 hours of daytime sleep (that's recommended). Maybe more daytime sleep would mean better night sleep? Ours got massively better once I managed to get the naps sorted.

Wakes up at 7am (can go till 8am if I am lucky)
Nap at 10/11 (depends on the day and what we are doing) (60mins or 80 mins, I try to make this one longer if possible)
Then up till about 2pm (if short 1st nap) or 3/4pm (if long 1st nap)
Then another nap at 2pm (short) or no nap if he slept well 1st nap
Then another nap 4-5:30pm (I am not pushing this one, anything over 45 mins is OK)
Then bedtime 8/9.

He wakes up still midnight, then 4am and then unsettled, but usually holds the light sleep till 7am/8am. If he is too fussy, I take him to the big bed.

Yes the night waking is because

• his day naps are too short
• he is feeding to sleep

Regarding day naps and day routine in general, at 9 months I would do this
7am milk feed
8am breakfast
9.20-10am nap
11.30am protein-based lunch
12.30 - 2.30 nap
3pm milk feed
5pm carb-based dinner
6pm bath
6.30pm milk feed
6.45pm stories and into bed awake.

Feeding to sleep is lovely. It really is and it is biologically normal for the baby. However if it results in the baby waking multiple times looking for feeds in the night, or unable to settle without the breast or bottle, then it might be time to make a change.
Only you can decide if you want to stop feeding to sleep. Then there are lots of gentle ways to do it, but you have to totally commit and be really consistent.