Early morning waking

[ollie2]

I have started to but my DS to bed at 7.30pm upstairs in his moses basket after his bath, feed and cuddle and although he st5ruggles at first, i eventually manage to get him to go to sleep and feed him again at 10.30. He usually then wakes at half 2 for another feed but the past couple of days he will only then go until just before 5am when he then wakes up. I have tried to get him to go back to sleep using shushing and a dummy but he keeps leting the dummy fall out of his mouth and wakes back up. He also seems to make a lot of grunting and straining noises all of the time. Can anyone suggest anthing to help break this pattern of early rising or is he too young at the moment to do anything?

My DS (18 wks) is also wide awake at 5am most mornings. He goes to sleep with very little fuss between 6.30-7pm and, at the moment, is waking for a feed twice before waking at 5am. This morning, after giving him a short feed (less than 5 mins) and then ignoring his giggling, he went back to sleep until 6.10. Bliss. This is the exception rather than the rule though, I'm afraid.

He used to go much longer without waking for a feed but over the last week or two the 4-month sleep regression seems to have kicked in. Ho hum.

He is also very noisy when he wakes up - no crying, just NOISE -simply his way of letting us know he wants attention!!

Also have had the same problem on and off for the last two months with DD (nearly 7 months). Have spent hours trawling the internet looking for advice. Some things to try include....

• making their morning nap a bit later (eg 9.30 instead of 9. Even if they wake early, don't put them down for a nap til 9 at the earliest otherwise you are reinforcing the early waking apparently.
• Sticking to your normal feed time, even if they are up earlier (obv, only if they are not waking up cos of food)
• figuring out if its something that's waking them eg heating coming on, etc

-putting them down to bed earlier as it could be that they're overtired when they go to bed so going into a deep sleep too early in the night.

Hope one or more of these helps. We are having some better nights (and mornings) and it seems to be that if you figure out the daytime sleep, it helps. Although that's a mission in itself! I also think teething pain, weaning, tummy aches all have an effect too so maybe this is just something we have to ride out. On the positive side, my DH gets to see more of my DD and I can legitimately crawl into bed at 9pm

I think it might be my partner getting up for work. We were thinking of trying him in his nursery at night instead of in with us but i am worried 7 weeks is too young. We do have a video monitor we would use aswell.