Going to attempt CC to try to stop 7mo waking at 5am - HELP

[BettyButterknife]

My DS2 is 7mo and sleeps badly in the day (wakes after 45 minutes and it takes a lot for me to get him to nap longer) but isn't bad at night - down at 7pm, dream feed at 10.30pm, and then goes through to anything between 4-5am.

Trouble is, DS1 is 3.5yo and used to also do the 5am trick - it's only been a year or so that he's actually slept until more like 7am - and now DS2 is waking him in the early morning (karma has worked fast on that one).

I don't think I can go through more years of 5am - DS1 did it for 12-18 months (I can't quite remember) - so we are going to send DS1 to granny's for two nights and try to knock this on the head.

I think we need to do CC, as when he wakes at 5am he is not hungry, and often cries even if we are cuddling him. Used to bring him into our bed but he'd be awake for 45mins-1hr and by the time he'd gone off it was pretty much time to get up. So we need to do something to get him to just sleep a wee bit longer, even just 1 hour would do.

I have never done controlled crying before. Can someone tell me a. if it's likely to work in this situation, and b. how we do it - do we literally just leave him??

Sorry Betty but I really don't think cc would work in this situation. Cc is for when your baby is tired and yours simply won't be at the end of all that sleep. And I am a big fan of cc (although not as 7 months, I should add).

There have been loads of threads on early wakings on Mumsnet - how about looking through some of those for ideas? I believe there is a theory that if you wake up before your baby and go in and get him for the day then you can gradually push the wake up time back. So (this sounds ghastly) you might need to get up at 4.50am for a few days, then push it back 10 minutes, and gradually back by a few minutes every few days, so that baby is secure in the knowledge that you are coming and he doesn't need to cry out for you. Or summat like that.

Oh gawd, that's not what I wanted to hear!

Other things I'd thought of are:

• pushing his bedtime later - if he's doing 10 hours I'm happy for him to go down at 8 to wake at 6!
• wake to sleep (argh)
• admitting defeat and bringing him in with us
• holding out for the clocks going forward

any of those sound plausible?

i agree with bibbity
i have no qualms about using cc
but early waking is something most people find it nigh on impossible to fix

a later bedtime, or indeed an earlier one might be worth a try for a few nights.

I don't think CC would work in this situation.

We always put DS to bed at 8 or even 9 and we were all fine with that as it meant he woke at 8am. As he got older we gradually made bedtimes earlier.

Hope you sort something though - 4-5 am isn't morning imho it's still night!

Curses. I wonder if a later bedtime would be a good option - 10 hours sleep isn't bad...

What about PUPD?

I have always done 8pm bed and ds tends to get nearer 6am and always did til he turned 18 months. Now he is happy with 9.5 hours night.

But then I never really tried to solve the early waking - just read and read about it with no effect!

Update: We've had two nights without DS1 and we've bumped DS2's bedtime by half an hour to 7.30pm (as in bath at 7, asleep by 7.30 which is always what we used to do with DS1).

First night, DS2 woke at 3 and a couple of times after that, but was not wide awake and so very easy to settle with a dummy and a rub of the back. This morning (second night) he woke at 4.55am and, again, was easy to settle back with a dummy and a hand on the back (of course, I couldn't go back to sleep after this though!). Both days, he woke for the morning at some time between 6-6.30am which is a much more respectable time to wake, in my book.

I have also been really strict with his daytime naps - 1 hour or less first thing, ie 9 or 9.30am, and then 1.5-1.75 hours at 1pm. That's all - not even 3 hours. He's a bit of a nightmare around 5pm but not impossible.

The other thing I've been doing is trying to reset his body clock by giving him his first feed by the french windows in the kitchen, so facing him out towards daylight, and I have also installed one of these daylight alarm clock thingys so he goes to sleep with a sunset and the sunrise starts at 6.15 getting lighter and lighter until it's fully bright at 6.45am. Really hoping that will all help to establish his sleep/wake cycle.

Fingers crossed.