Early waking - I know, I know...

[HoggleHoggle]

Apologies, I know this has been done to death on here, not least by me.

But I'm losing the plot with my 14 mo ds. Since he was 9 months he's been doing almost constant early waking with periods of better sleeping, but things always slide back.

We did gradual retreat again at 12 months and treated all pre 6am wakings as night wakings. This fixed the early wakings for a while.

But for the last month ds has dropped to one nap, which he prefers mid morning. This means he's usually awake from 12ish, so to help with this I brought bedtime forward from 7 to 6.30pm. This seemed to really work for him and for a few weeks he was sleeping 6.30-6.30.

However for the last 2 weeks the wakings have gone back to between 5-5.30. Gradual retreat doesn't work at all now. I'm wondering about pushing his bedtime back again but don't want to mess about with his routine constantly and also worry it would just mean 30 mins less sleep overall.

Has anyone got any tips?! It's been a constant battle and I'm so sick of it always sliding back to hideous wake up times.

The other thought I had was whether the clocks going forward might naturally help. The clocks going back definitely buggered things up last year and things never got back to how they used to be.

Lastly he's recently started walking as he main mode of getting around and also his vocalising has really increased. Could this have anything to do with it?

Its the timing of the nap you need to adjust. Unfortunately allowing an early nap tends to perpetuate an early waking cycle. They need a certain amount of awake time before their only nap of the day & they will wake earlier in order to get it. Also as you have found, allowing an early nap means he needs an earlier bedtime, which wont be helping. Just pushing bedtime back will likely make him more tired & he will still keep waking early.

What time do you let him nap? I would suggest slowly making it later by 15mins every few days until it starts closer to lunchtime.

Thanks omama. The time of the nap depends, I try to make sure it's not too early but go with ds's tired signs so he doesn't get overtired. Yesterday he woke at 5.50 and napped at 11 (we were at a group which was good for keeping him awake and happy longer!) and today he woke at 5.15 and napped at 10.

I had been wondering about just trying to get him as close to lunchtime as poss for the nap but when I have tried this (during the time he was sleeping later in the morning) he would often have only a very short nap so I was wondering whether actually mid morn is just the time he likes. I'm finding it so difficult to find my way on this.

I agree about making the nap later. Why not try a week of a 7pm bedtime and see if that helps?
I know it takes my DD a good few nights of a new bedtime for it to affect her wake time. I notice this when I need to do later shifts etc

Does he sleep through?

DS1 (now 2.7yo) woke at 5am for 18months. Some mornings it was 4:50, sometimes 5:15am. But he was sleeping through so DP and I just went to bed at 9pm and figured we'd ride it out. Sometimes if we brought him into bed when he woke he's go back to sleep for an hr or so but often he didn't.

He now sleeps til 6/7am. What's changed? He's older. He's dropped his daytime nap. DS2 is here. All if the above. None of it. The weather?? Who knows...

However, he now often wakes once in the night. Swings in roundabouts.

And we still go to bed at 9pm

Ok this is not very helpful but my DS has his nap 12-2 or 12.30-2.30 and still wakes up at 4.30/5. So shifting nap may not work miracles.

The thing is - he will prefer a morning nap in order to catch up on the sleep he didnt have at night.

I would imagine when you've kept him up til lunchtime before, the short nap will be because he got overtired. This is why its important to push the nap later in very small increments of 10-15mins at a time. You can take it as slowly as you like - when we did it we just did 15mins per week. Takes a few weeks but the consistency of pushing it out really does help. He may well have a few short naps as you follow this process but just put him to bed early that night & try again the next day. Also bear in mind that his sleep needs change as he gets older, & sticking with a morning nap will quite likely have him start waking at 4.30, then 4, maybe earlier. Been there done that & believe me its not fun!!! Good luck.

Posted too soon... What I meant to say was bedtime moving (and using nap move to make that happen) seems to make more sense. We are having some success with a Gro Clock (he's 18 months), might be worth trying if it continues.

Thanks all!

flip he does sleep through thank goodness. He used to do 7-7 then lots of things happened - illness, separation anxiety, clocks going back - and we've been stuck with early waking since then. But still sleeping through, strictly speaking.

salted I had been worried about that I have to admit. His naps have been at various times this week because of other stuff we've had on and it doesn't seem to follow that the later nap means a later wake up. But we haven't been doing it consistently so probably not able to draw any conclusions yet.

omama what you say makes a lot of sense, esp about the wakings getting earlier as ds gets older. I will keep pushing the nap times but take it slowly. Even if it doesn't ultimately solve the early waking it will at least help ds towards the end of the day as at the moment he won't have a second nap and so is completely shattered by late afternoon. It sounds stupid but I think one of the issues I'm finding with pushing the nap is that it means we're basically stuck at home all morning, at the moment if I take him in the car or buggy mid morn onwards he goes to sleep straight away so I avoid them. I imagine this will stop once he's more used to the new nap time.