Tried everything I can think of... How do I stop 4am wake up?

[zambooloo]

Help... 6mo dd wakes at 4.05 EVERY morning! I have tried...

• no nap before 9am
• later bed time (v tricky as she is exhausted by 6.30)
• naps for total of 3-3.5hrs a day
• last nap is 1/2hr at 4 or 4.30
• room is completely dark using blackout blind and easy blind stuck to window!
• co-sleep from about 3ish, makes little difference

Help, help, help!! What am I missing here?

I'm sure you've already tried this but if you fed her would she settle back to sleep? My DS is a regular 4.30 waker but will sometimes settle back to sleep after a quick feed and a cuddle. Usually in bed with me though which isn't ideal.... Still, 4.30 is just too uncivilised to be starting the day and I can normally still doze with him in bed!! if she won't settle back to sleep could you feed her and then leave her in her cot with some toys to amuse herself for a while? Might give you a precious extra half hour? It's so frustrating isn't it..... They wake at the absolute crack and then are back in bed 2 hours later while you're WIDE awake !! The only other thing I'd suggest is that it was around 6 months that my DS started to drop from 3 naps to 2. Perhaps your DD is starting to do this and is getting too much sleep in the day? Just a thought. Good luck!

Try wake to sleep

There are threads on it in the archived here and you can google

I used it on my DS and it worked

hodge yes... Tried feeding - no joy! Still wide awake. But thanks for offer - could leave her in cot but she is so noisy that it keeps me awake anyway!

ruby she also wakes a lot during the night, pretty much every 1-2hrs so wake to sleep surely wouldn't work as she may well be awake anyway???

op - what time are her naps usually & how long for? Can you post a typical day's routine so we can see the full picture?

Early waking (& particularly at this age) is usually related to 1) needing to drop/reduce the afternoon nap or 2) morning nap being too early. It can also be caused by overtiredness, however if your DD is sleeping 3-3.5hrs during the day I'd doubt that would be the case.

Can I also ask, wrt you saying she wakes every 2hrs through the night - is she an independent sleeper? Or do you feed/rock/cuddle her to sleep? Does she have a dummy? Oh & have you started weaning yet?

One final thing - with all the strategies you have tried - how long have you tried them for before deciding they weren't working? My DS was a chronic early waker from 6-12 months so I feel your pain. I tried allsorts during that period, but one thing I have learnt is that I probably never gave routine tweaks long enough to take effect. So if I didn't see results within a few days (I was completely desperate at that time) then I'd write it off as failure & try something else. The lack of consistency on my part probably contributed to it going on for so long & I wouldn't wish it on anyone. When I finally resolved it it actually took several weeks for things to settle down & then he slept fabulously.

Sorry for all the Q's but if you answer I will try & offer some suggestions. xx

Zambooloo - Sometimes it seems one of the hardest sleep issues to crack is the early waking! One thing I would say though is, is she then going down for a morning nap quite early? If so, she might effectively be using it as a continuation of her night sleep. It might be worth going through a few days of pain keeping her up longer into the morning to see if it helps (yes, I know she will be grumpy!)

Hi, thanks for all the replies. I think you are right about her using 1st nap as continuation of night time. I try to make her last until 9 but obviously this is impossible when she wakes at 4 so I'm struggling to change it.

This is my routine....
8.30-9 nap on dog walk
This isn't long enough for her so by the time we are home and sorted it's usually 9.30-9.45 so she sleeps again then for another 45 mins.
Nap 12.30-2.00/2.30
Nap 4.00/4.30 1/2hr
Bed 6.30 - she is very grumpy by this stage!

I would like to achieve this...
Up at 6-6.30
Nap 9-10
Nap 12-1.30/2
Nap 4-4.30
Bed 7

Thing is she is seriously grumpy after 2 hrs awake and has a full on screaming meltdown where witnesses think she is ill she makes so much fuss!

I've just started weaning her, she isn't really interested at the moment just turns her head away & clams mouth shut when offered a spoon, she is happier with finger food so I'm trying more of that... It is very slow progress!!

She doesn't settle herself at all, has dummy and is rocked to sleep. When in cot she wakes every hour or so. If in our bed she sleepsich better, for 3/4hr stretches. She wakes out of habit sure but can't resettle - wants a quick cuddle, then goes back down. I know I need to break this habit but don't know how! I really don't think I can do cc I'm not strong enough - but maybe that's what she needs?

Hope you can come up with some ideas - thank you!

She is getting a lot of sleep early in the day, which I would guess is reinforcing the early waking. It becomes a vicious cycle doesn't it. Is there a reason the dog walk has to happen at a set time? If it can be moved, I would start pushing it back in small increments (say 10 minutes) every few days, so she naps later. When it gets late enough the two pre-lunch naps can become one (probably not 1 hr 15 total though I'd have thought), either by moving the dog walk back early when she won't be sleepy or just doing it later for a while. Have you tried that?

Don't stress about the food if she is just 6 months.

Agree. Rather than trying to keep her up all the way til 9am, push back the naptime very very slowly, but be consistent. She may well get overtired, but its necessary to push on through it in order to break the EW cycle. As the morning nap gets later & she just has 1 sleep rather than 2 fragmented naps, you should find her wakeup time will start to get later. As this happens, you may find her lunchtime nap also shifts a little later, and she may no longer need that late afternoon nap.

A typical routine at around this age is the 2-3-4 routine, so your Lo is awake for 2hrs before taking a nap, then naps again 3hrs after the first nap ends, then is awake for 4hrs before bed. So her routine may end up like this:

Up: 7am
Nap: 9-10am
Nap: 1-3pm
Bed: 7pm

This is really interesting to me. My 9.5 mo wakes at 3.30-4 every day, and will not settle in his cot, so we end up cosleeping to get another couple of hours. I recently went back to work so with a 5.45am alarm I am a bit tired to say the least! He currently has a nap of about an hour after breakfast, from about 8.30 to 9.30am. This is his best nap of the day but from reading the above it sounds like it could be a continuation of night sleep. Do you think so? What time should his nap be in the morning. He's absolutely knackered by 8.30am. Would pushing it back stop the early waking? Like the OP I've tried it all.

Alphabeti - can I just check - he is waking between 3.30-4 every day, then you put him in bed with you so he gets another couple of hours sleep. So what time is he actually up for the day? Between 5.30-6? And is this every single day?

If so, then yes, I would say his nap is very definitely too early & it needs to start somewhere between 9.15-9.30am but no earlier. At the moment, the reason he is knackered by 8.30am is because he's up super early. But by continuing to put him down for his nap early, he can catch up on his night sleep. If the early morning nap is his best nap of the day its likely he may be overtired by bedtime, fall into a deep sleep too quickly & the early waking will continue. The way to break the cycle is to push that nap later. If you think about it, at the moment he wakes between 5.30-6am & naps at 8.30, so he's awake say 2.5-3 hours before he needs to nap. So if you want him to wake at say 7am then he would need to be napping around 9.30-10am - make sense?

The way to get it there is to very slowly push the nap later, by 5mins every few days. You also need to know that he WILL get overtired will you do this. You need to be prepared for this, so that you persevere. If you stick with it, and bear in mind it may take a few weeks to get the nap late enough & for it all to click into place, things will most definitely improve.

x

Fab. That's exactly what is happening. I shall give this a go over summer. Thanks for your advice. X