22 month old waking at 4.00-5.00am. Any advice please? Sooo tired!

[Jemster]

Hi
My dd wakes up at 5.00am every day, sometimes even earlier.
She cries, we bring her in our bed but she won't sleep. She just whines and says 'pig' (peppa) and 'milk'. We have ended up letting her watch peppa pig in an attempt to give us another half hour rest but she gets bored if that after 5 minutes and is just wide awake and desperate to get up!
We are shattered and irritable. I work until 1.00pm every day and am finding the afternoons hard going with 2 dc as I'm so tired.

Dd sleeps no more than one hour in the day, late morning at the childminders. She goes to bed at 7.00pm straight to sleep.

Can anyone help please, this is beginning to wear me down?

I was just about to post same problem jemster We can be exhausted together...

DS the same age and has been waking earlier and earlier. He was up at 4.10am this morning He has a nap of around an hour at nursery and goes to bed at 7.30pm. He still wakes at least one a night.

I'm wondering if I need to try and drop the nap completely or if he is over tired and needs to go to bed earlier.

Can you not just send her back to bed? Its still dark at that ungodly hour. Ds went through this at 2. I'd put him back in bed and tell him it was still night time. Repeatedly! But he got it after a couple of mornings, you have be tough and persevere if you really want her to stay in bed though. He's 3 and sleeps 8-7:30 now.

I agree with UriGeller. I always treat anything before 6.30 as the middle of the night and do whatever you do then. Also, I've noticed that if my kids wake up early and I bring them into our bed (in the vain hope of getting a little bit of extra sleep!) They seem to think it's a great idea and do it again the next day.

Umm. So she knows if she gets up she gets to watch peppa pig?

We have tried putting her back to bed but she screams so loud she has then woken up ds 6 who then also appears in our bedroom and finds it hard to get back to sleep!

We had this with dd when she was two. Nothing seemed to help. It was only when she started pre school at 3 and dropped the daytime napping that it stopped. I think it's quite common. I used to lie on the sofa whilst she pottered around. But it does pass. Was just a bit of a waiting game for us.

My 2.3 year old DS1 has been doing this for several months and we started bringing him to bed with us for an hour or two before all getting up at 7 just so that we all get a little more sleep, but the trouble is, his waking up has got earlier and earlier and now consistently wakes at 1-2am, crying/shouting the house down! We resorted to bringing him to bed with us as didn't want to wake DS2 and have tried to break the habit with controlled crying which doesn't work as he just gets hysterical and it can go on for hours which is not good for anybody. We're all exhausted and not sure what to try to break the pattern?

My 2.5 year old DD2 is the same. Wakes at least once a night, (although it's usually more like three times) often between 1am-2am, and has major tantrums unless I give her milk. I've tried cutting the milk, but she has stronger nerves than me and will scream the house down. As DD1 has just started school and is constantly tired, I'll do anything I can to prevent DD2 from waking her, so give in to the demands. I'm exhausted. It's affecting my marriage, my brain (I live in Germany and was fluent, but seriously have days where I can't string a sentence together) and I fear there isn't really an answer other than to wait and hope. The only slight theory I have is that in her whole life, she has slept through three nights. This was at a time a while back, (and I know this is going to sound strange) when she potty trained herself and was pretty dry at night. She then slipped back into old habits and has had major sleeping problems. I suspect the two are connected, so I'm attempting to potty train again. But on very little sleep, it's tough to stay patient. I am taking her to an osteopath tomorrow too, honestly, I'll try anything, other than drugs...