10 month old, early waking

[isitjustme999]

Hi

Does anyone have any advice or recommendations of sleep training methods for a 10 month old (and his veeeeery tired parents) who wakes any time from 3am onwards??

Between 3am and 5am we try to re-settle him (he is not good at self-settling at any time, and I'd love to solve this too); if we do manage to settle him, he'll only sleep for max 40 minutes and then he's crying again. At 5am I give in and we're up for the day.

He's at nursery 3 days a week so I do not have control over his daytime naps. Every book I read (and I understand why) starts with getting daytime naps right, which just makes me feel like a useless mother because there's nothing I can do about the daytime 3 days a week: but I'm not the only one in that position, so surely some sleep training must take that into account???

I'm not really a fan of cry it out, but really interested to hear any way people have found to solve this!

Thanks!

Have you tried wake to sleep? Google it. Basically you rouse them an hour before they usually get up. So if usually wakes at 3am you rouse at 2am. Not fully awake but just stir. They make then wake a bit longer.
I've been doing it for several days now and it's mostly worked. I think after sometime they then naturally wake up at a more acceptable time. But I'm still waking to sleep at the mo as I'm scared of dd going back to early morning wake ups.
Worth trying. No crying is involved unless you accidentally fully wake them up!

I know you don't control his daytime routine, but what is it? Is he still having 2 naps or are they just doing the nursery standard lunchtime nap?

How is he settled for sleep at other times?

Is he going through any developmental leaps or teething at the moment?

Will he settle if you bring him into your bed? Or does that not work for you? (It didn't for us - I didn't get any sleep for fear of crushing him and DS didn't fare much better!!)

Usually, early waking means that their first nap is too early BUT if he's just having the LTN he is possibly overtired and would need to have a nap on the way home from nursery or go to bed very early. It is counter intuitive but for some reason an early bedtime can let them sleep later as it battles the overtiredness which can cause more wakings.

Just to state the obvious, which can be easy to miss when you're knackered... treat the wakings as nighttime, no lights, no nappy changing unless he's pooed, soft voices, little eye contact

I go in and check he's okay then just say, it's still nighttime and give him 5 minutes. I suppose it's controlled crying but usually it worked within 10 minutes so it never felt like it was that traumatic.

Also try leaving him for a few minutes before you go in. He could just be having a noisy sleep transition. I would only go in if he sounded upset.

Hi Chickz and nottheOP - thanks for taking the time to respond so helpfully!

I've read about wake to sleep and good to know that it's worked for you; I'm terrified of waking him up fully, but will give it a go. Not a lot to lose after this morning's horrifically early start!

His naptime routine has been 30 mins to an hour before nursery, 2 hours after he got up. Having read yesterday that this could be seen as an extension of night time sleep, I delayed until 2 hours 45 minutes after he woke this morning and will carry on trying that. At nursery he just has one nap at lunchtime, usually about 90 minutes which is pretty good for him. Sometimes he will fall asleep on the way home and I suspect that getting that nap ingrained would help so I'm going to go shopping after picking up from nursery tonight in the hope that he'll have a decent sleep in the buggy: he ALWAYS wakes up as we get home, so if I'm going to get this nap in, I'll have to walk the streets, which is fine.

To get him to sleep, my husband and nursery give him a cuddle and then put him in the cot. I feed him til he's pretty much asleep, then put his sleeping bag on so he doesn't go down completely asleep. He tends to settle pretty easily but what I absolutely can't do is put him down wide awake and leave him to settle. He'd go nuts!!! I would so love to do that, but he's obviously just not that kind of boy. And the cuddle situation isn't so awful ;-)

nottheOP there have been loads of changes recently:illness, then travelling to relatives at Christmas, plus teething and growth spurt - all of htat has just got us into a really bad cycle, which I need to break as much for his sake (I feel that he wants more sleep) as ours!

Again, thanks for your responses - I'm going to try wake to sleep, enforcing the late pm nap and an earlier bedtime today. Fingers crossed!

I think that the pre nursery nap could be the problem. Continue to push it back and do persevere with the nap on the way home. You may have to do away with the early nap altogether but see how you get on with pushing it back.

How he falls asleep doesn't seem to be impacting on his nighttime sleep in my mind. If he has a negative sleep association it would likely be causing multiple wake ups rather than the early waking for the day.

In my experience, DS has woken early to practise his new skills in which case I left him to it unless he was upset OR was teething. This was the worst as it wasn't obvious - he didn't seem in pain but low and behold the teeth would pop through a week or so after the random early waking arrived and would go away as quickly as it arrived.

My only suggestion would be to try calpol or ibuprofen, cuddle in the dark and hope for the best.

Thanks nottheOP. There's no chance of leaving him to it when he wakes: he hollers and hollers until he gets the company he's looking for! We will persevere with these two naps and see what happens, hopefully without resorting to gin before noon! :-)

What is your nap routine? And what is her bedtime / wake time?

Hi Mrsmugoo

Bedtime was about 7.15pm but I'm moving it earlier in the hope that will give us a later wake time, which is currently around 5am. Last night he slept in 40 minute chunks from 1.10am onwards, with up to an hour awake in between. Not feeling that competent at work today!

Nap routine... he always had a nap 2 hours after waking up but I've read that they can see this as an extension of night time and therefore it's unhelpful re early waking, so I'm now trying to make that nap 3 hours after waking. Then at nursery he has a sleep of around 90 minutes at midday. I try to get him to sleep at 4.30ish on his way home from nursery, but that's not always successful. It's so hard not having control of this aspect...