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10 month old waking at 3:30 am & staying awake

2 replies

sproutpudding · 11/01/2011 09:52

My lovely DD is 10 months old and is generally a good sleeper so I feel a bit guilty posting on here when others have such serious problems...

For the last 3-4 weeks she's started waking at 3:30-4:00 am. She can settle back to sleep (this isn't the only time of night she wakes) and used to do so and sleep until about 5:30-6:00 am, at which point I'd get up with her. However, now she seems to be staying awake.

She shares a room with us at the moment and will give the odd grumpy shout every 30 minutes or so but otherwise lies there quietly. I try to get her to wait until about 5:00-5:30ish before bringing her into bed with us for a breastfeed (in the hope she'll fall asleep again), at which point she cuddles up and feeds herself back to sleep.

I was hoping that with time this would resolve itself but in fact it seems to be a habit now. I'm concerned that it's not terribly good for her - she does make up the time though with monster naps during the day though.

Has anyone else had a similar problem? Should we just be patient and wait for things to get better? Would it be better for me to bring her into bed as soon as she first wakes in the 'danger time' rather than trying to get her to wait (and fall back to sleep)? She loves loves loves cuddling up and breastfeeding and I am beginning to wonder if she is forcing herself to stay awake because of this (she is very good at forcing herself to stay awake when she wants to). Any advice gratefully received.

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ShushBaby · 11/01/2011 12:54

I posted about this a few weeks ago- dd is now eleven months. Perhaps it's a developmental thing as she's now gone back to sleeping until 5.30am ish like your little one (glad to hear that someone else has an early riser!). Didn't do anything in particular, apart from avoiding breastfeeding- could see us falling back into a pattern of night feeding which I did not want to happen!- and just sticking it out and being consistent, even when we felt desperate. For us this meant using our normal soothing techniques and not instigating any new ones out of desperation- eg feeding, taking her into our bed etc.

The only thing I can think of that changed routine-wise and may have helped her out of this pattern, is that she is in the process of going down to one nap (out of necessity really as she has started childcare). Now we have made this change I can see that she was probably more than ready for it and was compensating for her dawn antics with a long nap at 8.30am.

Your dd is still a bit younger though so maybe this wouldn't be appropriate at this point.

I really think that she will come through it. Not much help I know!

sproutpudding · 11/01/2011 13:48

On the contrary shushbaby, that's a great help and you've given me hope!

Thinking about what you wrote, I reckon I will keep on as we are, in other words trying to get her to wait until 5:00 before feeding her, rather than bringing her into bed earlier. When she grumbles I just get up to check on her and then stagger back to bed - she's not unhappy, I think she's just impatient to come into bed with us.

Daytime naps have always been a struggle and I do think she will be happier when she just has one. But she's not quite ready for that yet.

Thank you so much for your help!

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