Early waking 8 month old

[dinksdoes]

My 8 month old Daughter has been a pretty bad sleeper from day one. My partner and I cracked her every 2 hr waking when she turned 6 months with the reasurance sleep training technique. I am feeling much better - I was on the verge of being un able to cope with how tired I was and I think my daughter was also suffering from over tiredness. She always seemed very "wired". Any way our problem is that although she now sleeps a 9 hr stretch, its from 7pm till 4am! the last two nights its been 3am! We have tried to continue the reasurance technique but she will not have any of it - sometimes she does wake at random times in the night, but all it takes is for one of us to go in and tell her its ok and to go back to sleep and she does. But Not at 4am! At this point I am unable to start the day so i bring her into bed where she then suckles until 6.30-7, so its not really really bad as I drift off to sleep as she feeds, but I would like things to improve. Any ideas?
She currently has a nap at 8.30am for an hr and then another nap at 12.30/1 till 2/2.30 ish ( on a good day) today she only had half an hour in the morn and half an hr at mid-day. Even when she has a 2 hr nap in the afternoon she still wakes at 4. Be great to get some thoughts. Thanks

Sounds familiar!! My DD 7 months never slept well,goes down at 7 up around 5/5.30 and we are up and down to her all night! She nap for 45 minutes in the morning and about an hour at lunch time,not enough by far but she just won't/can't stay asleep. We have tried everything but nothing works. I think we just have to go with it and pray it gets better soon!!
My sympathies dinksdoes!

Hiya hun. Aside from the BFing, your DD sounds EXACTLY like my DS was at that age. We had some horrendous EW too so huge (((hugs))) b/c I know how exhausting they are.

My LO is 17.5months now & I have learned some very important lessons about EMW over the last 12 months.

Can I ask what time she usually goes to bed at night?

The biggest thing I can tell you is that offering a nap at 8.30am for 1hr is just compounding the problem. Offering a too long and/or too early morning nap can just encourage EW to continue b/c they are able to catch up on lost night sleep at the morning nap. And its quite likely she may be overtired by the time the PM nap comes around (hence why some days you only get 30mins).

What I would suggest is that you very gradually push the morning nap back later by 5mins every 3 days until it starts no earlier than 9am. This will be very difficult b/c she is waking so early, but trust me things will not get better unless you do it. You could try walking round the house looking out the windows with her in your arms, read her an extra story, just to help her get through the extra time awake. Let her sleep for an hour, then get her up (even if you have to wake her) & carry on with your morning. Do your PM nap as usual.

Once the nap starts at 9am & ends at 10am, then the next step is to shorten it. So every 3 days, push the start time of the nap later so she is going down at 9.05 & getting up at 10am (55mins). Then down for nap 9.10am & up at 10am (50mins). And so on until nap starts at 9.15am for 45mins. As the Am nap gets shorter you might find the PM nap needs to come a wee bit earlier towards 12.30. Hold at this stage for a week or so to see what effect this has on your wakeup time. If she is still waking early keep gradually shortening the AM nap so it is 30mins from 9.30 - 10am. Hopefully her afternoon nap should lengthen to around 2hrs & this should help your wakeup get later.

She is quite likely to get overtired while you do this & you may get some days where she does a naturally short 30min AM nap & PM nap (like today). FWIW if my LO did a short 30 min (OT) nap then I would bring the next nap a bit earlier so she isn't so overtired. And if second nap is 30mins then I would try & get a very short nap in the afternoon, OR offer an early bedtime.

Ooh that's an epic post. But its what I did in your situation & it really did help.

HTH.x

Thank you for the very clear info, I did suspected that the early nap was prb too early, but Im also so exhusted I kind of need it by then too!!
She goes to bed at 7 ish, bath at 6, feed then down. I know Im very lucky with her sleeping 8 hrs ( shes been waking at 3am now for last few nights) so I shouldnt complain too much. But I also know that if we can sort the constant waking at night then hoefullly there would be something we can do to sort the early waking. I will try and push the nap back till 9, and I guess as she gets older this nap should be the first to go? She does seem hungry when she wakes and gets quite upset if I delay in feeding her so I guess thats my only concern, as when she wakes before this I feel confident that she is not hungry. But she also seems wide awake so hopefully if I adjust the naps thing will improve. Thanks again omama and sympathies to you too chilli x