Early waking toddler - any advice?

[amyboo]

DS is 21 months old and has always been a reasonable sleeper. He goes to bed around 7/7.30pm and usually falls asleep pretty quickly. For the last month or so he's screamed if we leave the room too fast at llights out, and so I/we have taken to telling him that we'll stay for 5 minutes by the door and then leave. This usually works.

However, for the last few weeks he's started waking early - around 5am and doing the same thing - screaming until one of us goes to his room. We can then usually settle him easily, but if we try to leave he'll scream again. There's nothing wrong with him - he has his dummy, duvet is in place, etc etc. We've taken to one of us dozing in the spare bed in his room once he wakes up like this - just to get some extra rest! He generally doesn't go back to sleep, but will at least doze or lay quietly till around 6.30am when we're happy to get up.

I've really started to have enough of this sleeping thing though. I'm 5 months pregnant with DC2 and working full time, so really want some more sleep. DS is certainly not waking up hungry (doesn't matter if he eats loads of dinner or none - always the same problem), and we've tried putting him to bed later, but still have the same problem. He's in creche full time, so is still having one nap at lunchtime of around 1-2 hours. But even if he doesn't nap at the weekend he'll still do the same thing.

Does anyone have any advice? I'm not sure that sleeping in his room is a good habit to be getting into, but if we leave him to cry he just climbs out of the cot. We're going to take the side down at the weekend and see what happens. But I'm worried that this will make things worse, as he'll be able to come into our room (we live in a flat). I'm really exasperated about the whole thing, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be very grateful! I'd just like him to get back to waking around 6.15am like he used to....

bump Anyone? Lst night was even worse - 45 minutes of crying everytime I left the room until he went to sleep. Then he woke at 2.15am wanting me in the room - laid down as soon as I appeared and started screaming as soon as I left. I managed to leave his room until about 3.15am, but then he started screaming again and I was so exhausted I ended up sleeping in his room till about 6am. He didn't go back to sleep until around 4.30am, then woke just after 7am. Sigh.

Hi Amy

Don't really have any words of wisdom I'm afraid but we've been going through similar here. We've been using withdrawal method to get out room which means he's fine now at start of night and naps. BUT if he wakes up in night or when he wakes up in morning (which is usually between 4.30 and 5) we have to go into room and stay with him until he falls asleep and then try and creep out. It's awful. We're actually moving him from the box room into the spare room in the next couple of weeks so that there will be room for us to fall asleep on the floor in there as at the minute we're having to sit in a chair and it's v difficult to fall asleep in that! If we don't go in he just gets hysterical so we've resigned ourselves to dealing with it like this for now - but I'm not pregnant so I can imagine that must be v difficult for you.

Sorry I can't help but I just wanted you to know you're not alone.

Thanks for the response. I just wanted to report back that after what seemed like a lifetime (but was actually probably about 5-6 weeks), we seem to have found the end of the tunnel! I'm managing to leave DS's room after I put him to bed at night, although we have to leave the door open. The last few nights he's settled fairly well, although I've had to go back in and shush him, put him back in the duvet etc a couple of times before he falls asleep. And, we haven't had to spend the night in his room for nearly a week - he's almost stopped waking in the night, but if he does, I can usually settle him and then tell him I'm going back to bed and he seems fine!

So, maybe, as with most of these things, it's just a phase that has to be worked through. Switching him to a toddler bed in a few weeks, so I'm just hoping the sleeping lasts!