1 year old - waking regularly at 5am. Does anyone have any advice?

[Saltedcaramel2014]

Hi,
DS (age 1) goes down well at 7pm, is still waking to feed at midnight, then needs settling once/twice in the night - all of which is ok. He wakes regularly at 5am though and it's wearing us out. Occasionally he'll sleep to 6am and he is usually happier then. Whenever he wakes he needs a nap two hours later.

We have blackout blinds, give him toys to play with etc but after about 10 mins he's crying a lot.

Thank you

My ds (same age) was doing the same - waking between 4.30 and 5, seemingly up for the day. Nightmare. This last week I have been picking him up and feeding him and then putting him back in his cot - basically treating it like a night feed no matter how wide awake he seemed (the first time I did this was just sheer desperation as I was so tired, I never expected him to go back to sleep). But he did... Until 7.30! I would never have believed it until it happened. It has worked several times since. He will cry for a couple of minutes and then just drop back off. Worth a try?

Hi Superking, thanks for the advice. This used to work for us too, but I think the light mornings have woken him up more so he'll have a feed but then wants to play. 7.30 sounds like bliss - enjoy that!

Not want you want to hear but my ds did this until he was nearly 3, it was exhausting. But going to bed at 7 means he's had 10 hours sleep . What happens if you put him to bed later?

Hi there - sorry to hear you had three years of this and feel pretty sure we will too! It makes no difference when we put him to be unfortunately - we've tried adjusting it

Mine too. I'm very pro sleep training and my 3yo sleeps 7-7 but IMO early waking is pretty impossible to crack. It's so exhausting though. I get him up, give him a cup I milk and do all the cleaning before ds1 gets up! And I go to bed at 10. Sorry, not very helpful :(

It's nice to know I'm in good company bigkids. I'm also in bed by ten, which does help. Now to train him to sit quietly with a cup of milk while I do things...

He's not quiet! He plays with the Tupperware cupboard, empties the washing machine, tries to pull the telly over. Three hours of that then wrestling them both to the cm and I don't know how I do a full days work - it's like I've already done one! At least mine sleeps straight through from
7 so I do get a good sleep.

Just think about when they're teenagers and sleeping till 2pm...

We treat early mornings like they are night waking - quite nappy change / bottle if needed otherwise he is left.
We did move the last nap earlier when this first started though so he got to bed more tired.

Has he started doing this or always done it? If he has started it may be a phase. Ds did this and it settled after about six to eight weeks. I read that this is not unusual at this age. We also put ds to bed at eight so that he wakes at seven to seven thirty. It means we get less time for me and dh in the evening but we both really need the extra sleep in the morning.

What naps does he have in the day? Ds started doing this and we dropped his later afternoon nap and it did the trick

He's pretty much always done it, with the occasional 530/6 waking. We can't leave him (we have tried a lot to treat the wakings as night wakings) as he cries loudly until we get him up. Bigkids I know what you mean, I've sometimes been with him for four hours before my working day's started! But at least he's in a lovely mood in the mornings.

Whatahooha - he usually naps 7.15-8 then 12-2. I might try moving bedtime back again and see if it makes any difference now he's older.

Two thoughts : have you tried putting him to bed earlier? 2-7 is a long time for a 1 year old to be awake. Perhaps try a 6:45 or even 6:30 bed time?
Also, have you tried waking him a but earlier and settling him back to sleep? Eg wake at 4:30 and get him back to sleep, with milk if necessary, and see what happens?

We had similar issues with ds. Never found a definitive answer but the two suggestions above had some success. I do feel your pain.

What time is hes last meal? When ds played around with hes dinner for a few days running I put it back to an hour later (nothing to do with sleep, just to make sure he was actually hungry enough to enjoy it) and he started sleeping till half 8 (was previously 7).

Sounds like my 10mo. We are trying limiting his daytime naps to 2h max at the moment to see if it makes a difference. We did get a few 6.30/7 starts which was promising but it has been 4 or 5 last few days...

My friends a sleep consultant - here's what she suggests for early risers between the age of 1-3yo. sleepfairyparentrescue.co.uk/blog/2014/02/23/fixing-early-rising-in-1-3-year-olds/

Thanks for advice. Later bedtime didn't help unfortunately. In fact he woke for the day at 4.30! Little blighter. We've tried earlier bedtime but no joy. Reducing naps by 75% sounds quite brutal (on the link) even if it's just for three days, but maybe I'm a bit soft. Will try different meal time to start with

Definitely reduce the naps - that's nearly 3 hours, so he's not needing as much at night. At 1 DD just slept 12-1, and 7-7 at night. Could you wake him at 1, or start that nap a bit later?