Please can you help with my 2yo routine / sleep regression?

[SuperTryer]

Can anyone offer any advice on sleep regression for my 2yo please? He's 25 months now, and since turning 2 things have altered. He's been waking up exactly 1.5 hrs early every morning regardless of what time we do bedtime.

Prior to this he's always had a strong routine and is normally a great sleeper- we've been v lucky!

At the moment the early wake up means he's grizzly all morning and I'm counting down the minutes till his nap! Unfortunately he still wakes up grizzly after his nap and it's same again all afternoon. He just seems tired and needs more sleep. I can't extend his nap and once he's awake after nap or bedtime he won't go back down.

I've tried earlier bedtimes, and also conversely a later bedtime. Whatever happens he still wakes up early, always precisely 1.5 hrs earlier than normal, so at the moment I'm sticking to the earlier bedtimes.

Still he's so grizzly all day. He's also fussy with food since all this started, probably because he's over tired.

It has coincided with settling into a new room at nursery (he attends part-time) which started last week. He's also being clingy which is probably all part of it.

His usual disposition is cheerful, confident, happy and reliable sleeper! So this is all stressful! The mornings in particular I'm struggling with as I used to get up 30 mins before my son to do yoga and it really helped my mental health. Now I'm woken super early with his crying out and I'm spending my mornings trying and failing to get him vs k down! I feel tired and it's miserable.

To clarify we can rule out certain things - eg we use white noise machine, blackout blinds etc, and he has a very strong routine. Teething is all done. When he wakes early I'm going in and patting him down as if it's night time, not engaging him in chat, and only being bright and breezy once it's "proper morning" wake up time. But he's wide awake and will not go back down - cries and cries.

So any tips? I'm sure this is common but I'm struggling with the mornings followed by a grizzly upset tired boy all day Do I just wait it out and hope things go back to normal or is there anything I can do? Please help if you can! Thank you 🙏

.........

Old routine before this regression:
Bathtime 7pm
7.30pm into bed
Wake up 7am
Lunchtime nap roughly 12.30-2 ish

Responding as we've just gone through this, DD is 26 months. For us it also coincided with moving her into a toddler bed as we have another DD due in October. She went from reliably sleeping 12 hours a night (7-7) to suddenly waking at 5-5.30am (4.30am some mornings!) Whatever we did to try and get her back to sleep didn't work so we'd just take it in turns to get up with her. From what I've read and having spoken to people it's very normal at this age and I don't think the light mornings help. We didn't change anything to do with her routine apart from slightly reduce her daytime nap (she'd sleep until after 3 if we let her so I was waking her at 2.30) but have found on days she's more active she will sometimes sleep later in the morning. It has started to gradually shift a bit later and now she's waking at more like 6-6.15 (with the odd 5.15-5.30 wake still). I know it's not very helpful but in my recent experience I think it's a bit of a phase/wait it out thing. Bring on the dark Autumn mornings!

@MrsSamR thank you for your reply! Good to hear it's common, but oh no, sounds like it could go on for a while!

Perhaps it's his nap time - maybe he's ready to drop it?

It's also pretty late for a nap if he's getting up now at 530 (if he's getting up 90 mins earlier than his previous wake up)

I have twins a bit younger and they wake around 530 (but that generally suits me as I have to be U.K. early to get everyone ready for childcare / school / work) - they will then go back down for a nap around 10am for 2 hours and then that's it for rest of day. Similar bed time routine

I didn't think the nap was that late? Nursery put them down around 12.45. The books and baby sites I read always say a 5/5.5 hr wake window is about right for this age

Also i definitely don't think he's ready to drop his nap as he's always knackered by lunchtime and goes down easily.

I'd reduce the nap. I've started waking my 2yo after just over an hour and his night sleep has improved.

We reduced my eldest's nap to 1 hour at this age and it hugely helped. X

We had this at exactly 2 years, which also coincided with me being 36 weeks pregnant.
It presented as quite intense separation anxiety as bedtimes were suddenly a nightmare, he began waking in the night and early in the morning. We spent a lot of time sleeping in his room and comforting him but after 2 weeks of that it didn’t improve so we did some gentle controlled crying, popping in every few mins and reassuring him as well as keeping his door open as he fell asleep. After about 3 weeks since it started he began settling fine again, just in time for DD to arrive 😵‍💫

Thanks @Teaandbiscuits16 sounds like it's very common at 2. We might try that then.

At the moment his lunchtime nap lasts around 1hr 15 mins so not sure if reducing it further will make much odds? Also at times at nursery he has less and we still get the early wake ups.

@SuperTryer Personally I wouldn’t reduce it. Obviously every toddler is different but we didn’t begin to reduce his until he was over 2.5 and he dropped it shortly before his 3rd birthday.
Hope you all get some rest soon.

Thanks that's really helpful

We went through this recently at 21 months...lasted about 4 weeks of fighting every nap, every bedtime, 4am wakes etc. Add in a newborn and it was absolute hell 😴
Honestly the best thing we found was sticking as much as possible to the current routine of 1.5 hour nap in the day, and solid night time routine, keeping things dark and calm at 4am, and sticking the TV on.
After 4 weeks he just snapped out of it and has been back to 1.5 - 2 hour naps in the afternoon and bed for 7:30/8 up for 6:30/7 as if nothing had happened. He's always been a crap sleeper but that was the worst ever.

Hi, currently going through the same thing 😭. She’s just turned 2 and we’ve put her into the toddler bed. The first night was mayhem but after that she slept straight through and alone as usual for five nights until we went away for a few days and she had to share a room with me. Now she will not go to bed alone, we’re currently taking it in turns sleeping next to her bed and she’s waking once in the night for a couple of hours. She’s fine and will lie there if we’re there but if not she’s screaming and out of the bed running to the door like that’s scared. Any tips to help us through this? @SuperTryer