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!!

[ledkr]

Can i join too? My dd is 14 months and seems to vary from 4-6am i so understand the frightened to stay up sentiment.Sky plus is my friend.I watch all my evening veiwing in the morning. I am so tired constantly,would love to take more exercise but am too tired and dd is fairly moany because of her early starts. She is usually in full whinge mode by 7.45
Dh and i do take it in turns to get up which really helps.

[fififrog]

Ooh meggy must have been posting same time as you! DD is pretty active - she's certainly been pretty early to roll crawl and walk. But funnily enough I was asking my mum if she is like me, and mum said she's a lot calmer than I was and that I never sat still for one second an she could never put me down for a nap (I think they were all in the pushchair or on the sofa). Must be DH's influence. Still I'd rather be up for good at 5.30am than up for an hour at 3.30 or something hideous she says looking on the bright side of the hideous early morning yawnfest

[vix206]

LittleMilla, the rule I'm using for time between waking from nap to bed time is 5 hours. I am sticking to it religiously because otherwise DS gets overtired and wakes up really early. So no matter what time he wakes from his one nap, he is in bed 4.45 hrs later with the hope he self settles within 15 mins. Almost always works out.

DS is nearly 19 months and tbh it's only the past 2 weeks he's finally settled happily into a one nap schedule. We had 3 months of muddling through and winging it. I feel like he's finally got into a good pattern of sleeping 7-6 then napping 12.30-2. I wake him after 1.5 hrs of napping otherwise he wakes too early next morning.

I don't know how much of the success is down to my tweaks and how much is due to him just 'getting it' (after 19 months of totally NOT getting it!!!!!)

Did everyone feel like they got a lie in this morning with the clocks changing? We didn't quite make it to 7am, DS woke a bit early today as I was a bit late with bedtime and it threw him off.

I'm not going to adjust his schedule to the new times I'm just shifting it all ahead by an hour so it'll be 8-7 sleep and 1.30-3 nap. That's the plan anyway we shall see.

[ledkr]

We were up at 5.30 old money (cant take new time seriously the first night) She has been sweet though but its now nearly 4 and i have no energy whatsoevr as i feel its now the evening.
Am hoping 5.30 will become 6.30 tomorrow.

I have tweaked naps to kingdom come but i can conclude it makes no difference to her relentless early wakes. Just have to be greatfull for the full nights sleep i guess.
I went for a pushchair power walk at 8 which was really nice.

[LittleMilla]

What an absolute pleasure to have a child that wakes up c.7am!?!?! I know it's not 'real' but I am certainly going to stick to old timings for as long as poss if this is how it pans out!

xx

[fififrog]

Well DD woke at 4.55 old money this morning (kept her on GMT yesterday as we had a party to go to and it worked better that way). Still she was then pretty quiet for another 45 but I don't know if she slept. Tried her on one nap today, it was ok but I hadn't give her lunch at 11, which was of course 10 by her tum! And it was a struggle to make it to midday. So I think she's not really ready for one nap yet :-( also teething and generally grumpy. Put her to bed on BST she seemed knackered anyway but kicked up an almighty fuss... Sigh.

[LittleMilla]

Meant to add earlier about general ants-in-pants-siness. My Ds is a complete fidget and never been one of those angelic babies that are just happy to sit in their pushchair when stationary. Even on a bus DS wants to be out, wriggling, trying to push the bell, pick off labels etc etc. Never stops. Just taken his first steps (V.PROUD MUMMY!!) and is already trying to run .

Back to sleepy stuff though. I have stuck to normal routine +1 hour. And he's currently battling to go off - frst bedtime tears we've had in a while.

[Meggymoodle]

Hi ladies - how's it all going? Not sure where we are really. We did OK for the first few nights with the clock change but we were back to 5.45 this morning - for both my children!! What's that about? They are now both fast asleep as DS (3) has his first swimming lesson today and I was worried he would sink and drown if he went tired. This may come back and bite me later as I'm giving him an hour, which is a lot for him these days (although he is a total nightmare to wake :()

DD is still on one nap - but she would merrily fall asleep at 10am if I let her - I guess part of it is just habit. She only slept for just over an hour yesterday which is not enough so we had early bed which may have been the reason for the EW - as she did just over 11 hours so can't really complain. I slept like a bag of pooh though - only managed just over 4 hours and I'm hanging today. Just sat down for 5 mins now and feel like I could go to sleep for ever :(

Anyway, onwards and upwards - off to the pool in a min. Enjoy the sun everyone.

[LittleMilla]

We are creeping earlier too, although today was 6:45am...which by this thread's standards is a lie in!

Prob is that he really just seems to sleep for 11 and bit hours. So last night he was asleep at 7:15pm. Although his post-lunch nap is a bit later today, so I think he'll be up until 7:30pm. I don't mind - happy to put him to bed a touch later if it means he'll sleep in for longer! Just before the clocks changed this was never a sure-bet!

Meggy sorry to hear you're feeling wiped. I am contemplating a second baby (I know, I need my bumps read) and I just don't know how i'll do it if I have another one that isn't that fond of sleeping!

[Meggymoodle]

Milla - you might have a brilliant sleeper. DS was amazing right from the beginning. DD was a nightmare from the beginning - you just can't tell! It's nice having 2 though, even though very tiring - they are incredibly sweet together a lot of the time. I don't suppose it'll last but there we go!

[fififrog]

Milla do our babies communicate by telepathy? We also had a 7.15-6.40 (ok so you got 5 mins more!) I cannot remember the last time she slept that long - well ok I can but she was ill. Incredible to have a lie in. Both yesterday and today she has had 2x40min naps at nursery so let's see if she can manage a repeat performance - though she fell asleep a bit quicker, by 7, today. I really hope so as I've contracted some evil pukey bug and could do without an early start. At least I know she can sleep that long if she is so inclined.

I have decided that I honestly don't think messing with the naps makes any difference. I think it's best she gets what daytime sleep she thinks she needs. It seems to work fine on nursery days and they don't try to "program" her at all. meggy do you still feel moving to one nap helped? I would honestly rather DD had two naps than try to cajole her through to after lunch and eat at weird times just now.

[fififrog]

Ugh 5.30 again, whinged off and on til 6, BF then cries for a solid half hour before passing out again for half an hour. What was that about??!

[LittleMilla]

Fifi . DS slept until 6:30am (ish) this morning, went to bed/sleep at 7:30pm last night.

DS needs c.11 hours sleep, the end. I too don't believe that fiddling around with his naps will do munch...they're so close to moving to one nap, it almost feels futile. He's up for a few hours before having another nap anyway and sometimes he'll sleep for 40 mins (yesterday) and other times he'll do 1.5 hours.

My main prob with waking him from am nap is that there's NO guarantee he'll then sleep for 1.5 hours after lunch. I do believe that some babies are born better nappers and in our case, it took him to 6 months old before he'd do longer than 40 mins! So I am loathe to ever wake him TBH!!

Ah, we'll get there.

In the meantime, DS is going to be 1 on 5th May and I am tempted to organise a MN sleepover for him and his naughty fellow early wakers!!

[Meggymoodle]

Frog - re. does one nap help - honestly? I have no idea. She did amazingly the night before last - 6.45pm to 6.30am and then last night woke at 4.30am and didn't go back to sleep until 6.15 so who knows? I have to say though since moving to one nap we've had a 6 on the clock more often that we had before so I don't know but I think it's helped a bit.

All I know is that I felt unnatural stirrings of a need to fling the wretched child out of the window at 5 this morning :(

We are going away for a week now staying with friends and then a family gathering (in-laws - what joy) so I'll have to grab her quick if she starts screaming at 5 in the morning which will get her back into her bad ways.

Boooooooo

Hope you're all doing well - sounds like a great idea for the sleep over - bags not do the morning shift!

[leebitton]

hello
This is my first post and i hope you don't mind me posting!
Both mine have been early wakers, with DS1 limiting his morning nap really helped 'cure' it! :) Well, gave us post 6am starts. That was from about 9mo.
DS2 is a different story :( I have limited his mn to 10 mins and allow him as long as he wants around 12.30 - STILL have 5.45 nearly everymorning.... He's 9 months old. Boohoo!
I know it will get better though. DS1 now sleeps till at least 6.3 every morning.
I just hate waking and seeing 5(something) on the clock!!!

[fififrog]

Welcome Lee! It's my turn to feel moderately fraudulent as we've now had 3 post-6am starts this week. I actually think it might be vix's tactic of earlier bedtime, as a result of the clock change. We couldn't really have managed it without the clocks or we would have been getting her to sleep by 6pm only getting home from work at 5pm - just impossible, dinner and BF alone take about 45mins! Her naps are still totally random and uncorrelated with earlier/later mornings. But we are now trying to get her to bed by 6.45 and she is usually sleeping for getting on for 11.5hrs this week. I do have to keep reminding myself this could just be a nice blip!

milla our dc's do sound very similar, we also have only had longer naps after about 9mo - I had spent the previous two months shushing or even rocking her back to sleep after 30mins every single nap even if it took 20mins. She finally just sorted herself out in December, and at 10months then started sleeping through* properly. I think these things just take their own sweet time!

*where sleeping through = making it past 4.30

[vix206]

How is everyone getting on? DS started going to a childminder last week do his sleep has become a bit disrupted. We had a couple of 5am starts and he's struggling to sleep to 6am even in good mornings.

[fififrog]

Hi Vix been away a few days and TBH she hasn' slept great. We'v had to share a room and she's been waking with a cough. I then try not to breathe in case i keep her awake... DH snoring like a train also for some reason. Not much sleep for me! Mornings have been anywhere between 5 and 6. The esrly nights and long sleeps are a thing of the past sgain. I think body clock adjusting combined with a very tired week for some reason. She is definitely beginning to drop to one nap, if she has the morning one too late or too long she won't do the afternoon one. I am going to take a couple of days off this week and let her find her routine, then we'll see how hard I have to push her to get her to go til after morning activities and lunch!

Hope others are faring better... If people don't come back to whinge does that mean they are now sound asleep til 7?

[vix206]

Ah 7am starts, the stuff of dreams!

[LittleMilla]

Nope! Reasons for going quiet are: 1. we are getting used to 6am now it's light (WTF!?!?!?!). And 2: putting him to be at 7:30pm to ensure he sleeps until 6 ish.

Supper just coming, will post again later...x

[ebmummy]

Have been following this thread for some time. And unfortunately am in the same boat as a lot of you-DS sleeps 7pm-5.30 (on a really good day), and there is nothing working with the early wakings. He's having 2 naps during the day (9.30-10 and 1/1.30-2.30). I have noticed though, on the days when he only has 1 nap (usually the morning), and won't nap in the afternoon (if we have people over and the house is noisy), he sleeps much better at night. I do want to move towards 1 nap as I'm aware he may be having too much daytime sleep, but he's so whingy and moany at the moment that I actually look forward to naptimes with some anticipation!

[fififrog]

eb ditto. I think we just have to suck it up a few more weeks til they're properly ready to drop to one... And then pray it means they start sleeping in! DD is quite unsettled at the moment, a fair bit of coughing so probably just the next blasted virus. I have found little evidence that the day's naps affect the night's sleep, but am hoping that move to one nap may just coincide with a new phase and that that new phase will be a later waking one.

[phdlife]

Can I join this thread?

My dd is 3 tomorrow and has always woken for early-morning bf. I spent January trying to knock the 3am feed on it's head, after a great deal of shouting/sobbing/fighting got to 4am, February she pushed it back, March I gave in and she slid back to 4, but then also added bfs at 5 and 6.

Now she's waking at 4am and throwing great big strops that wake her fully up (grr frickin terrible 3's!!!!) eg. after waking this morning, feeding, then groping my cleavage (her comfort object) for twenty mins, she suddenly heaved herself upright, looked around, then hurled herself down towards the foot of the bed sobbing, "nobody loves me!"

Yesterday we got back to sleep at 6am after being awake for 2hrs but not today and not the day before that. It's her temperament that's doing it, not her morning naps, so I'm guessing I'm in for it until she outgrows her shouty default.

[fififrog]

OMG phd you poor thing... 3 years and still not sleeping through you must be shattered. I can't even begin to imagine. I hope she has a lovely birthday though :)

[fififrog]

Yes yes yes 6am two nights ago, 6.10 yesterday! Now if she could manage to avoid the brief wake and cry at 5am we'd be sorted... Assuming of course this continues but it probably won't...