14 month old waking at 4.30am every day despite routine changes

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My 14 month old has been waking up at around 4:30 every morning since around 12 months old. I have tried so hard to make him sleep until at least 6 but nothing seems to work.
His current routine is

04:30 - wake up
06:00 - will be take downstairs
09:00 - first nap (1.5-2hrs)
14:30 - second nap (1hr)
18:30 - bedtime (although usually sit in his cot awake up 7:30/8:00

Initially I assumed he was just getting too much sleep so tried to do later bedtime. I have tried putting him to bed at 7:00, 7:30, 8:00, 8:30 and 9:00. All of which he continued to wake up at 4:30. Or would wake up for a few hours in the night from being overtired and still wake up at 4:30/5:00. So I decided to put his bedtime back to 6:30 as he gets the most sleep at that time,

I then tried to make his 2 naps into 1 midday nap from about 11:30-1:30. However he became very overtired and very grumpy trying to keep him awake until 11:30. And then because he got so overtired he only managed to sleep for 30mins. This then meant he was so overtired for bed and had a lot of night wake up.

I have also tried to change the timing of his 2 naps. E.g. moving his second nap away from his bedtime to around 1:30 for an hour. But he still wakes up at 4:30.

The problem is he will wake up and 4:30 and will refuse to ever go back to sleep. Most of the time when I take him downstairs at 6am he is already shattered.

(For reference he has his naps downstairs on a baby rocker chair as he refuses to nap in his cot. Not sure if this affects his sleep in the night. Any tips to transition him to cot napping would be helpful.)

I also considered that his room gets bright around 4:30 so bought a black out blind which has made his room significantly darker but that hasn’t helped either,

I am really sorry to say this but it's a natural wake up time for many young children. Can be related to hunger or loneliness, or just natural human rhythm.

What do you do for the 1.5 hours between 4:30 & 6:00?

Might be best for adult sleep to just take in turns (apologies if solo parenting!) and go downstairs at 4:30, offer breakfast, keep everything very quiet, to let the other person sleep.

Is he walking?
How much fresh air is he getting?
Are you still bf/drinking coffee?

It can be normal for lots of babies and toddlers to wake up early. What do you do with him when he wakes before you take him down at 4.30? When mine were waking at that sort of time we took it in turns to get up and just took them down and started the day.

Completely normal, mine is 8 and still never grown out of it however he’s old enough to lay there and read. It may improve once the winter comes and the mornings are darker. Just take it in turns to get up

DC2 used to do this. I never found a solution to
it except them to bring them onto my bed at 4am and hope they went back to sleep (often did). They did gradually get later as they got older. By the time they started school, tbey were waking up at 6. They are a young adult now and still wake up early. In their case, I put it down to ADHD.

Does he want to eat when he wakes up? What time is dinner and what is dinner?

How long did you persevere with later bed times? Both our kids went through these phases but we managed to push it later with persistent later bed times and / or shorter naps. In our case they were just waking up because they had had enough sleep.

He may well only need 10 hours overnight sleep if he has low sleep needs. I would commit to two weeks of later bedtimes to see if you can push the morning wake later - it can takes ages to see any changes. Zero chance would I accept a 4.30am wake every day without a fight, that's the middle of the night 🤣 Not sure if you could stretch to getting a sleep consultant to help too. It would be money well spent in my eyes!

Just treat it like you would 2am, feed him and keep going with soothing him until he goes back to sleep. Even if it's 6am. No lights, noise, interaction etc until 'wake up time'. Start using a gro clock now even though he's too young, it will help as he gets older.

That’s so difficult, OP. We had exactly the same experience with our now 2.5 year old. For a full year it was 4.30am or even 4.10am, no matter what time he’d gone to sleep.

I posted on MN and was recommended to try a sleep consultant. We had a one off appointment and implemented the changes she recommended, which started working miraculously fast. He would even sleep until 6.15ish, which honestly felt like a lie in! It’s settled at around 5.30am, but that’s ok. If you can, try a sleep consultant.

My 8yo and 10yo were also up at this time today. Argh! Hope it gets easier for you!

Cot naps aren’t superior 😊

We usually just offer water, and try to calm him down then leave after 5 mins. We do this probably every 30mins

He isn’t walking yet. He’s pulling himself up and crushing really fast and supported walking but can’t stand up or walk without support,
at the moment he gets at least 30mins of fresh air everyday. Although usually it’s about 1-2hrs a day.
on really cold or rainy days he doesn’t get much.

and no he is on cows milk although do breastfeed my 2month old. And I don’t drink caffeine

even when we take him down at 6:00. We don’t normally give breakfast until 7:30. He doesn’t seem hungry or desperate for it. We also offer water when he wakes up but he doesn’t seem to really be desperate for that either.
he eats dinner at around 5:00. And he will eat whatever we are having. E.g. pasta, curry, some sort of chicken or mince meal, roast etc.

I would be tempted to leave a pile of books in his cot and a no spill cup of water and a night light on and see if he still calls you.

Have you got a Yoto for him? I think you can use sone of the settings so it acts as a Groclock?

Is he eating enough during the day? This is often the main cause of early waking? You could give him a no spill cup of milk when he wakes and leave him to it in his cot.

There is a good guide from the Caroline Walker Trust which has sample menus and advice in portion sizes.

The answer's in the post above. Two months ago, he got a sibling, now two months old. It's a cry for attention. I'd give him a cuddle and a bottle of milk, possibly bring into bed with you.

The other thing to bear in mind is that he may have discomfort cutting teeth. I'd be minded to try a dose of calpol and see if that helps. Looking back, I underestimated this hugely and could have avoided a lot of pain for ds and me.

It sounds like you are doing the really, really hard yards - I cannot begin to imagine the heavy duty childcare involved with babies of 14 months and 2 months. Very gently, I hope your contraception is sorted, you really don't want to end up with three under three.

I agree with pp - a new baby is an extremely common trigger of regression in the older children, especially if they are still very young to understand “sharing” or “Mummy will play with you later”.

Has DC1 always been an early bird? Some babies simply wake very early and seem to need little sleep. I don’t think my eldest acquired the ability to sleep late until the hormones kicked in a puberty but they do reach a point where they can entertain themselves.

Otherwise I echo the advice to ensure he isn’t waking up hungry, make sure there are soft toys and books in his cot but also make sure he is getting as much fuss and attention from you as possible - I would bring him into bed if it helped.

How much support do you have from DH/others? Its really tough having children close together at this stage. I found it helpful when other adults were available to have them take the baby whilst I used that time to prioritise the elder child/children.