5mo DD has decided that night time is 8pm-3am

[Carolineno]

After months of sleeping through the night, over the last month, DD has started passing out, impossible to wake, at 8pm and waking up wide eyed and ready for the day at 3am. If I feed her and put her back to bed, she will cry and cry or just lie there whimpering. If I manage to get her back to sleep, she wakes me with crying again at 4am, and 5am, and 6am. In a sleep haze, I've tried to feed her, but she sucks for a bit then gets frustrated and cries, because she's not really hungry. She just wants to play.

In an attempt to make her sleep through the night, I have tried to keep her up later than 8pm and to wake her up during naps in the day, but that results in her having epic tired meltdowns where she can't be consoled by anything.

I am sure I am doing this completely wrong.

Any solutions?

A phase

Least it was with both of mine. I used to go downstairs with them and watch bbc news 24 or something for an hour or two, then go back to bed for a bit when they looked sleepy.

At this age I wouldn't be messing with cutting daytime naps o making bedtime any later than it already is.

Chances are this will stop as quickly as it started and will just be a passing phase.

Personally I wouldn't be getting up at that time though. Just battle on keep trying to get baby to sleep until she gets it.

I would feed as soon as possible upon waking. Then just keep re-inserting dummy. I'd even bring baby in with me if it meant settling her back to sleep.

What about waking baby and feeding her when you go to bed. Change nappy or something at this time to wake her. The idea is to wake and re-set her body clock so that she stays asleep longer in the morning.

Hi, there are lots of posts on MN about early risers. We tried the "wake to sleep" method (just google search for it) at 5 months and that did seem to work a little. It disrupted his patterns so sometimes he would sleep later. But it wasn't a magic solution. At 8 months, we found ourselves going back to the same problem. This time, we've tried blackout curtains PLUS blackout blind. This seemed to help enormously. I think things in general also improved as he self settles himself back to sleep now. I know 3 months is a long time to wait, but it will get better

Listening with interest as my 5.5month has been doing the EXACT same thing for the last week and its hell. Nothing works - he's not even hungry!