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!!

Hello ladies. Have been lurking around just keeping an eye on you all and sending you all huge waves of sympathy. Just to let you know that the early waking has been totally miraculous since the jubilee weekend but just this week we have hit the 18-month sleep regression so whilst we have post-6am wake-ups we're up for 3 hours in the night . Anyway sending you all sympathy and virtual caffeine.

Gosh you poor things! Hasn't been a barrell of laughs here since I last posted but On the scale of things DD's teething episode is over (even if tooth appeared then sodding vanished back inside - why do they do that???). WeirdlyDD has also suddenly turned into a will-exerting tyrant, but everything is Ok. Early early still though 5am ish though got 5.25 this morning.

Re Milla's book - I can't bring myself to buy yet another sleep book, but you see DD has been waking anywhere from 4.50 for six months now, and I have only twice fed her before 6, so I can't be reinforcing her wake up that strongly. Why would holding out another half hour help, I keep asking myself. And I never go in in the night unless something really unusual is going on (ie ill or once I think she must have had a nightmare or something). In the morning I leave her inthe cot til 6 regardless of what time she wakes. So really I don't see there's much more I can do.... Still if they have it at the library I might take a squiz.

Hugs to all you desperate ladies. fee, I turfed DH out and coslept last wed when DD hadn't eaten for three days and wouldn't settle. Helped a lot!

Ps should have said well done to Milla and LO :) dead jealous though!! X

fifi there might be more that is relevant to you but wasn't for us IYSWIM. Those were the two things that I read and went "ah-ha" but must confess that once we found our cure I didn't read other stuff.

Someone said on here that there are often copies in the library, but mine was about £3 off amazon. It's the only one I have read since DS was a few month's old so don't I'm probably not as demoralised/disallusioned .

I just hope that it might help all ofyou guys as I know how bloody hard it is! x

Incredibly we had 6.30 this morning! She woke at 5am as usual, shouted for a minute or two then back to sleep. Don't know why this morning she decided to go back to sleep but it was a welcome change :)

Hope the rest of you are doing ok!

Had few days of post 5am wake ups which I was so grateful for I felt like I had no reason to whinge. Then today back to 4am. FFS

Hi ladies....soooo I'M BACK. Bugger bugger bugger. The last 3 nights have been 5.45am, 5.15am and then this morning 4.50am. Not as bad as you feeno but frankly I could do without it all over again as I guess it'll be another 6 months until we get another post-6am break. DS was up at midnight last night so I had about 4 hours sleep having not gone to bed early enough. Am hanging and DD was utterly vicious with lack of sleep this morning. I so hope she naps for long enough this afternoon otherwise we'll all be crying this afternoon.

Believe me Meggy I know exactly where you're coming from. We've had EW for approx 8 months now and getting nowhere fast. Seems to be getting worse instead if better. I hope it is just s bloody long phase like everyone keeps telling me it is but 8 months doesn't feel like a phase!
You have my sympathy-its hellish.

Can I complain about DH? Please? He decided to 'finish a chapter' last night and kept me awake with his coughing and rustling. An hour and a half later DD starts screaming. Between the two of them they will be the death of me. This is after a few nights of broken sleep which I took all of.

Then this morning, to add insult to injury, he kept 'zoning out' (i.e. not listening to me) like he was the tired one.

I can totally relate

At least DH is well behaved though god knows what he's doing now thumping around upstairs, he'll wake DD soon!

Well our good night's were short-lived too. Just as we thought I was safe to stay up and watch wallander the cr4p started again... Miserable little thing today too. I think the blasted teeth are up to no good again, not that that explains the early mornings...

My eyes are so red and sore. Ds go back to sleep!!!!

Bleurgh 0520 again this morning so we are well and truly back into the pattern of EWs - I could weep. It's been such a lovely 6 weeks. Now just in time for the summer hols we have this nonsense starting again. What a cow! Ah well, there we go, not a lot I can do as I haven't changed anything. Will just have to start going to bed earlier again and deal with it. Frog - I think teeth have something to do with it as well - or am I grasping at straws yet again?....

Several night wakings and 5am 2 days in a row. Work today

This is so crap. We all seem to be at our wits end with this. 4.50 today. I'm destined to be woken pre-5am for the foreseeable future it seems or post 5am only with night wakings. When new baby comes in October I can see myself becoming a sleep deprived dithering wreck of a woman that becomes a mere shadow of what I once was. Sob.

feeno have you got any family that can give you a night off? It's hideous when you're pregnant.

We had 0640 this morning but with an hour up between 4 and 5 so I'm not sure that really counts.

Hi Meggy
Yes, my mum and dad have been amazing. They took DS to stay with them last 3 nights but stupidly I've been lying awake stressing about them losing sleep because of him. I just havent been able to switch off at all and keep checking my phone to get updates on what time he is waking up. Stupid me! I just want some consistency really so that I can get some consistency back in my own sleep patterns. The anxiety about DS poor sleeping is getting to me and it seems I have true insomnia now. Aaaaargh!

It does wear off feeno. I was the same with DD for ages in that I wasn't getting proper sleep even when she was. I took some kids anti-histamine for 3 nights running and it knocked me out. I figured if you could give it to babies anyway, whatever miniscule amount she was getting through the breast milk was unlikely to cause her harm.

I feel so sorry for you. Being pregnant is knackering at the best of times. If you're stressing about your parents, do what I do - go and stay with the kids with them, then they do the early mornings and even if they don't do them all it's a break. Also, they can take the kids for an hour or so in the day so I can sleep. It's fab.

He's back home and today is 4.20 wake up time

feeno that sucks. I have no words of wisdom or comfort, but you have my every sympathy. Have you tried letting him scream it out for a bit? How old is he? How pregnant are you?

I think I would try and let him go back to sleep just ignoring him while you have only one in the house. We've been quick to leap up with DD because otherwise she always wakes DS but if she were on her own, I'd leave her until six. Today I' going to buy a digital timer to put on her lamp in her room and see if we can at least get her waiting quietly....

Thanks Meggy. sympathy is good...my dad keeps Telling me to stop moaning about it, he's a very unsympathetic guy but he helps with DS so cant complain too much We've been leaving him until 6 every day forever-he very rarely if ever goes back to sleep. We've tried one nap and for a few days he sleeps a little better and then he's back to c.4am again. I'm starting to wonder whether I should just push 1 nap now 100% of time just to try and get some consistency into our lives. He is in the right age range so...
I'm pretty pregnant at the mo-28 weeks but look about 40 weeks and feel it too. This pregnancy feels way heavier than my first-I was all neat and tidy with a cute bump. This time I'm huge all over-quite depressing really.

feeno you sound like you're having a real shocker. Hugs! It seems like you really do have the worst of the pack. I moan about DD waking early but unless there's some illness or teeth issue it's never before 5am. And we get to 5.30 much of the time these days. But she goes to bed at 7 and teething/illness aside again sleeps really well. So 10.5ish hours a night, can't really complain. I have tried almost everything suggested in several sleep books to no avail, bar two: firstly wake to sleep because no way will that work. She's spent enough time waking at 4 or 4.30 and even 5 of her own accord. The other thing I haven' tried is a super-late bedtime. This is one extreme measure suggested by Marc Weissbluth and I've read it somewhere else as well. Keep them up as long as poss, ideally say 10.30pm, for about a week to get them so tired they have to sleep later, then gradually bring bedtime forward until you find a sustainable balance. Sounds scary, but if leaving him for 1.5 hours doesn't work then I'm not sure any gentle techniques are going to get you anywhere.

Re one nap - I decided once she'd done it a couple of times to "enforce" it, as two naps were just getting me worn out an stressed. and she got used to it pretty quick. Though Even now, 3 months later she drops off in the pushchair or car in the morning but I try to avoid this if at all possible as it messes up pm nap no end.

I would go with the one nap too. I have the same pushchair problem in the morning but generally it works. It took a while for her to get with the programme but now she's fairly into it and for what it's worth, for a while it did sort out the early waking.

Thanks Meggy and Fifi for advice on the one nap and the hugs and sympathy. Sometimes it helps to know someone understands how crappy this whole scenario is. I'm going for the one nap-he is just over 15 months so he's definitely old enough and it is too stressful trying to manage two. The only thing I've gotta be wary of now is over tiredness cuz that's another thing that causes his early and night wakings. He's beautiful and I love him but I don't love the sleep deprivation he's causing.
FWIW Fifi I tried wake to sleep a while back, big fat flop! The only thing i haven't tried is the keeping him up super late thing-the overtired monster scares me too much to try it. But maybe I'll be desperate enough some time soon.

Thanks again gals xx

Sooo, he only had one nap yesterday between 11 and 12.45, but he still woke at 4.10 this morning. FFS. Him and his father will be the death of me...snoring from one and stupid o clock wakes from the other. F-ing ridiculous. This is no life.