A thread for my early waking friends who want a whinge

[fififrog]

A few weeks back there were quite a few of us with DCs about a year old, too young for gro clocks etc waking up TOO BLOOMING EARLY. Where are you all at now? DD seems to be getting earlier. Cough not helping but we had 4.55 this morning. I hate to say it but I actually enjoyed her being ill last week as she slept til 6.30 once. Some mornings I think "just a long phase we can live with it" but this morning I was in total despair. Will I ever be able to make it to 10pm without thinking I will regret staying up this late??! I know some of you will say stick with the messing around with morning nap, it will fix it, but to be honest I don't believe it will and I just want to WHINGE to people who will understand!!

Hi fififrog I wasn't on the original thread but OMG I understand. See the thread about '17 month old waking at 4am' and you'll see I'm in the same boat, and have been for 18 months now. I've tried everything and have come to the conclusion that whether I fight this or submit to it - it will get better. At some point. So I surrender.

I'm in bed by 9 every night and always awake for the day between 4 and 5 although for the past week I've been firm in not going into DS until 6am when his light comes on (it's on a timer).

He's also crying out in his sleep 2 or 3 times per night at the moment so all in all I'm a tired mummy. I have to watch because too much sleep deprivation and I get depressed to the point of not functioning well.

Anyway. Sorry to ramble just I trouncing myself and letting you know you're not alone!!!!

Trouncing myself??! Bloody iPhone. I meant introducing myself!

I wasn't on the original thread but I will have a moan too to keep you company!

8 month old DS kept waking in the night then woke at 5, I am working today so will be exhausted.

I'm here.

Dd2 is 14mo and usually wakes around 4.30am

She has recently (last few days) started refusing to go to bed, so we aren't getting any sleep until gone 11pm,

Hello - I wasn't on the original thread either but v. happy to moan along with you all. I have a DD who is 15 months old and up at 0500 - 0530 every morning. I know compared to 0430 that actually seems quite reasonable but it still wears thin! This has been going on since she started sleeping through at about 7ish months....

We went to bed last night at 1015 and I said to DH that we were taking a risk going to bed so late - how ridiculous that 1015 is now considered a late night!

I am trying to get her down to one nap as it did work back along stopping her having a long morning nap but how I keep her to 12 when she's been awake at 0530 I don't know. All deeply frustrating.

My DS is 3 years and sleeping beautifully until nearly 7. I would love it if even she would go to 0600. How my view of a lie-in has changed :-(

Anyway, as misery loves company, nice to know there are others in the same boat!

Welcome all, didn't really have a previous whinge thread, more a collection of "help me" threads :)

It is funny how you change your perception of what is reasonable, isn't it. Back when, I used to want her to make it to 6.30 (she's always been pretty early), now I'm actually fairly pleased if we make it to 5.30! I keep thinking "some people get up at this time". I imagine you poor 4.30 folk think "at least milkmen get up at this time"!

It is indeed also very frustrating when they can't keep quiet all night - DD is great at self-settling but she still cried out when she wakes and so that's me awake for another 10mins at least, disturbing the sleep pattern etc!

I am currently reminding myself how nice it is that DD is already asleep and that we can have a quiet evening. I guess we are all just shifted to earlier times for everything, seems a cycle that is hard to break - I am also hanging in there to see if one nap might help, butshe's so not ready yet!

Happy evenings and quiet nights to you all! X

PS OMG mumatron I really hope that situation improves!!

It's weird, she literally went down for a nap one day last week fine. Woke up an hour later screaming and had a melt down everytime she's been in the cot since.

She currently asleep on the sofa after having another freak out up stairs. She will wake up when I move her soon but hopefully a 5 min cry will be enough. She'll probably wake about 2.30am, self settle then be up again at the crack of dawn around 4.30am.

Until xmas she was sleeping 7-7 :(

Hello, hello, hello.

Right, I am not as bad as some, but I was on the other thread and can vouch that thus far fucking about with fiddling with DS's naps hasn't worked.

In fact longest sleep so far has come from him sleeping for 1.5 hr kip in the morning and an hour in the afternoon - he then got up at 6:30am next day .

SOOOO want omama's theory to work and will deffo try it again once I am not too tired and craving the morning nap!

Laughing a lot at lie-in expectations. He woke up at 5:45am today but I was with my mum at her parents'...so she got up with him and I got to lie in until 7:45am. Literally, it felt like bliss. Ready for bed now though .

Oh, and sorry to burst any bubbles. My DS is crawling, cruising etc and it disn't make the blindest bit of difference. HOWEVER, he's almost walking and so I am finding that if I get him to walk LOADS it does seem to knacker him out. So guess what we've been doing today .

I thought I would also join this thread as DH has switched off.
DD is finally "sleeping through" at 15 months fingers crossed I havent jinxed it the majority of the time.
However. . . . .our day begins at 4am every bloody day. Obviously given the mad hour she wakes she still has 2 naps and in all honesty it doesnt appear to make any difference what we do, it is always 4am
She is walking well and is extremely active so I think this is something I have to learn to live with

Yes, I'm here too, struggling with 13 month old DS...

Longest lie-in was 5am this morning-usually up earlier than that.

And funny how DH comes in from work (after I've put DS to bed) and exclaims how he 'misses DS something crazy', yet at 4am in the morning doesn't want to know.. Christ on a stick...

Can I drag my tired butt in? 5:48 EVERY morning on the dot, this is after waking at midnight and 3 for milk.

waves to mumatron

I also have a 5 year old that comes in around 2am most nights to tell me he's tired (?) Go back to feckin bed then!!

DH and I do take turns each night, ie, he will do nights I will take him DS3 down in the morning, or I will do nights and he will take him down.

I am an 8am girl. I hate waking up to see the early number 5 on my clock.

The other night DH came down with the gastro bug we have all had at 1am. I took the baby downstairs, he didnt go back to sleep until THREE am and then was up at 5! I tend to go to bed at 9, but he wakes around 11/12, so we generally dont get more than 2/3 hours of unbroken sleep.

I am on my knees!!! HV keeps telling me to do controlled crying. I cant do it, not yet, hes too little (14 months today!) and has hearing/allergy issues still...

suspect you are all in bed, or watching OBEM thinking "just you wait, that tiny cute squishy newborn you are cuddling WILL become a non sleeping 1 year old quicker than you think! :o

(took me ages to write this as my words ended up back to front and wrong because my eyes are so tired.

julez Stop bragging with your 5.48am! Your positively spoilt!

Dd has finally gone to sleep in her cot after the 3rd attempt.

I don't think I can face trying CC. It's too hard. Breaks my heart to see her little sad face :(

I'm hoping she just hurry's up and grows out of this phase.

I should be in bed trying to sleep but I feel like I need to unwind a bit first.

I put dd to bed finally at 10.30 last night.....and she's still there!

No night wake ups or anything.

I was petrified something was wrong with her when I woke up and it was light.

She will probably make it up to me by being a terror tonight but right now I am happy.

I have tried CC for the early wakings and IT DOES NOT WORK. You just get a very sad & tired baby and pissed off neighbours, in my case! I am a toughie in many ways, but haven't found any humane way to crack this.

5:20am wake up today. Left him chatting until 6:10am though...now I am just couting the minutes until I he can go back to bed!

Going to start short am nap this weekend once DH is about...

What is it with their mega-precise timing? We get 5.19 exactly most mornings. mumatron sounds like you had a grim evening but WOW what a morning! Hope your DD isn't coming down with something as I can't believe she'll keep that up.

Milla we're now 3 weeks into the short morning nap (with the exception of 3 days last week when she was properly ill) and it's not done anything yet.

We haven't tried CC in the morning (we did try it one night but it just enraged DD that I kept popping in and out) but we have ignored her til 6 for three months now unless she's crying hard, in which case we sit with her. This did work when we had a longish phase of 4.40, but doesn't do anything past 5am. This week have been going in and sitting with a hand on her back as I do if she wakes during a nap, but that's not working either. Ignoring or sitting quietly seem to be the only options. If I bring her into bed she screams blue murder til I let her get up.

Last night was a good one: didn't hear a peep and she woke at 5.40, but I have come down with her evil nursery-lurgy and I didn't sleep at all. Off sick today as feel rough as, my mum has taken her off and I'm back to bed. Realised this is the first time I've had more than 2 hrs to myself for a whole year. Pity all I can do is lie here and groan!

Oh, the amazing thing this week is that she's finally started napping properly at nursery: 45 mins in the morning and well over an hour in the afternoon. This means we might actually be able to do something occasionally at the weekend rather than trying to protect her afternoon naps. Hurrah! it clearly won't last though

Weeeellll ladies - I tried one nap yesterday. It was hard keeping her up until 1145 from a 5.30am wake up but we managed it. She did 90 mins until 1.15. I put her to bed at 6.15pm as she was hanging and she slept through until 6.15am!!!!!!!!!!!

I've tried it today and she's woken way too early from her nap so she'll be totally zonked by this evening which'll mean early waking from being overtired :( How do you ever win in this game?

Anyway, just to say, we cured ours for a bit with a later shorter morning nap and then we went right back to 5.15 or whatever after about 2 weeks (but my what a blissful 2 weeks they were). My guess is that they are just hard-wired for early mornings :(

And FWIW I've found that CC doesn't work with early mornings - they just cry more and more and more until it's getting up time anyway. I think once they've had 10 hours or however much you've pretty much had your lot.

Meggy my DH was talking to someone last night who said that longer sleeps only really happen once they're on one nap. My DS is only 10 mo though, so worried I am going to have to wait a bit longer!

He was livid about going down this am though, so perhaps he IS ready to start shifting to one? Hmmm, another thing to ponder I guess!

It always feels so wrong to wake him from naps. And I know that early mornings are more wrong , but I find it hard to get my head round waking a sleeping baby. Perhaps it's cause I love sleep so much!

Don't want to pee on anyone's parade but I've a walking, talking almost 19 month old on 1 nap and his sleep was better at 15 months than it is now. Our problem has always been battling overtiredness.

Ok, am trying this limiting daytime nap, and haven't really seen any difference. Granted its only been a few days...

DS woke at 5am this morning, but just shut the door and turned the monitor off (and stuck a pillow over my head), and then woke up at 6am. The only time he's EVER slept till 7am is when we all had the gastro bug.

Re CC-I find it works for day naps (have shifted his afternoon nap from 2.30 to 1.30), but DEFINITELY doesn't work in the mornings.

Yeah vix I'm afraid that I know quite a few people with early waking 3 year olds :( I'm just trying not to depress myself royally by imagining that mine will be one.....

Vix & Meggy I am telling myself that once he's bigger I can use a gro clock and that will be that answer to ALL of my prayers.

However, realistically I know that he's my husband's son which means he's full of beans and hates to miss a thing. So something tells me that he's never going to be one to just roll over (hollow laugh).

Let's all tell ourselves that this high-energy/willfull children will grow up to be hugely successful in whatever they choose to be!

LittleMilla I have said clock arriving today :)

Can you say that it's amazing, regardless? Therefore not bursting my fragile bubble that it'll be the magic bullet should this continue .

Saying that, DS didn't wake up until 6:10am today. Which is pretty bloody good so I mustn't grumble. Just hate the fact I wake up c.5:30am in 'anticipation'...

LittleMilla - I use a groclock with DS (who is 3 but was somewhere around just over 2 when we started using it). It does work but you will need to give it a couple of days for the concept to sink in. I never really knew how well it worked until I dossed in with DS once when we had people staying over. He didn't know I was in there. I heard him wake at 6am and he chatted really quietly to himself until the sun came up on his clock whereupon he leapt out of bed like a shot. I was amazed.

I fear that DD is too young for that yet at 15 months. That said - she woke up at 6.10 too today having only had one nap yesterday again. I'm trying the same today and praying it's not a fluke having had 2 mornings after 6am. And yes, I'm still waking at 5.30 ready for the day.... yawn......

Good luck with the clock vix

ebmummy good job on the pillow over the head ignoring - I can never manage it.