Should I ignore him before 6am?

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As long as I can remember DS has been an early waker (5/5:30am). He is now almost 12 months old and he still hasn't outgrown what I had hoped was "just a phase". He is a "spirited" child who wakes up raring to go. To be fair, he goes to bed at 7pm and sleeps through the night, but lately, I'm starting to wonder if I should leave him in his cot when he wakes at that hour. The reason is because yesterday, out of the blue, he slept in until 6am and he was a different baby. He wasn't clingy, yawning and rubbing his eyes by 7am. I'm now convinced that he wakes us before he's finished his night sleep and I've been perpetuating this for a long time. He ends up having to have his nap by 8/8:30am because he's exhausted by then. I need advice because when I do try to leave him in his cot, he becomes hysterical after 30 minutes - no one gets anymore sleep and it's a miserable way to start one's day. But maybe I really need to dig in my heels and be firm that he won't be allowed to get out of bed before nighttime is done (ie before 6am). Do people think this is even an effective intervention at this age? Is there any other way out of this?

I had this with ds. I would go in to him (just incase he had a dirty nappy) and change him, put his favourite toys in the cot and give him a cup of milk. I would then go back to bed and doze for around half hour! It can be more tricky too as the clocks change, this doesn't always help. I found that eventually ds would amuse himself when he woke and wouldn't cry/winge for me to go in so I would sleep until desired wakening time!

My health visitor suggested that my 7 month old daughter might be hungry and thats why she was waking up early, ie before 6am, so to stop all day time BF's and give her solid snacks instead - this really helped and her wakings delayed to about 6.30am, but she's started getting earlier again. Now she's 9 months she wakes at 5.30-6am and if I dont get her and feed her, she winges intermittently until I do, meaning we dont get any sleep anyway. If I do feed her, occassionally she'll drop back to sleep untill 7ish but not always.
I have no idea how to delay the waking to 7am - when she was 3-6 months old she always slept throguh to 7am - a fond memory!
I've heard that you can buy baby alarm clocks but I think these are for toddlers.

Dd is a bit older (20 months) but was getting up ealier & earlier and grumpy with it so I did leave her in the cot. I'd go in first, give her a cuddle then settle her back down and say "it's too early" and put her lulabye on. I've done it twice and she's gone from 6am wake ups to after 7am most days - in fact it's been after 8 the last two mornings. She's going to bed a bit later.

It's not the easiest thing to do, involved a certain amount of having to listen to her crying and I couldn't do it morning after morning - but it worked!

HTH

I would go for a later bedtime with some supper as well.

At 12 months my DS was only having one nap in the afternoon. I assume that if your DS is napping at 8.30am that he has another later as well.

From time to time it becomes clear that what worked before no longer does, particularly as they are growing and learning new skills, so you have to find a new 'routine'.

So hopefully, you have a later bedtime with supper. A later waking in the morning with a later nap in the day.

I dont imagine for a second that he will adapt to this immediately but generally if you want something to change, you have to give elsewhere.

I think you can encourage him to stay in bed a little later. It is prob best to do it gradually - eg build it up into 10 min slots until you have reached your 6am target.

He might not go back to sleep, but he can get in the habit of playing at least. My DS1 liked me to put some music on for him - perhaps you could try that?

BTW Pinklisa I think your DD is still very young to do the same! Both mine had periods between about 6 and 10 mths where they got up really early. It gets better as they nap less in the day, but if you force less naps then you just end up with a miserable baby all day!

Hi-I agree with shazronnie..my older dd is now 2 and she seemed to go through a phase of v early waking (if there's a '5' in the hour it's just too early..with dd2 we are having to reassess everything but that's another story..) we went for the gentle approach of leaving 10mins or so befroe going in if she woke before 6am and this seemed to gradually work. also would suggest making that morning nap as late as possible (ie at least til 9am)

Hi, my DD (almost 6 months) has also just started to wake early i.e 5.15 after having gone through the night for months. My sister has suggested I should try gradually changing her naps times. Currently she naps at around 9 until 9.45. Tomorrow, if possible I'm going to try getting her to nap at 9.20 and try to delay it over the next few weeks, hoping that she will go to bed a little later. My sister also suggested that maybe she's not using enough energy in the day. She reckons it will get better when she starts to crawl!

Thanks for the advice. I've tried to delay his morning nap but I've faced two problems with this approach. 1) he gets overtired so easily and then he has a much harder time settling to sleep and his sleep is shorter. Then he's still very tired after his morning nap, which makes it impossible to delay the second nap without making him even more overtired. 2) moving his nap by 10minutes everyday is impossible when his wake-up time varies (from 5:10 to 5:45am). This means that if one morning he goes from 5:30 to 9am then the next morning he might get up at 5:10am then I'm trying to stretch him to 9:10am which is much more than a mere 10 minutes. It doesn't seem to work because his body is ready for sleep based on how long he's been awake, not based on what the clock time is. Any advice?