Early wakening

[lynne1981]

Hi everyone.
My wee one is 8 months tomorrow and for the past 4/5 weeks has been waking at 5.45 on the dot. She's not really unhappy unless she's teething (she now has 7 teeth). Before then I always woke her at 7.15 to start her day and she'd be down by 7.15.
This in itself took a lot of hard work to achieve as as a newborn she would go up to 12 hours awake. Day sleep as always been hard work as for the first 14 weeks I had to take her for walks for all naps then rock in pram for a month and for the last 4 months she had a pretty consistent routine of long am nap and 3 short naps ( could never get longer). She dropped a nap about a month ago as it was getting late and to be honest this is when it all went wrong .

So at mo she's doing nap 9.20 to 10.50ish, nap 1.30 to 2ish then 4.30 to 5ish. Asleep by 7.30 latest. Although I had a few weeks where I could only get 3 x 30 min naps.

For first time ever the other day she slept 2 hours at lunch 1.20 to 3.15 ( after 1.5 hours in the morn) so I put her to bed by 6.15 with no 3rd nap and she woke at 4.30!!! If she ever had a short morn nap she is so grumpy and has never had a long lunchtime nap.

I'm just really confused as how to fix this and what routine to aim for.

Sorry to go on and on. I've spent so much time reading other people's posts I thought I may as well ask!!

Thanks :)

Hi there,

We're moving this thread over to our Sleep topic - hopefully there'll be people who can help the OP there.

Bump for you

Is this since the lighter mornings? How dark is her room?

Cut the third nap - she should be on 2 naps per day IMHO. Hope that helps

Oh good point - my DD was only on 2 at this age. If you can't get the morning one shorter and the afternoon ones to combine, push the first afternoon one later.

And also lengthen the lunchtime one a bit if you think she needs it. I also make sure not to put my similarly aged LO to bed before 7.30 but he is always in bed by 8.

Is she having night feeds?

If she is sleeping through, consider waking her when you go to bed (feeding if needed) to re-set he body clock.

If she is already having a feed when you go to bed, this could be a sign she is starting to get ready to drop that feed. If you don't give it she might sleep through until, say, 3am or 4am. It does mean a temporary return of a night feed but the feed should be at a time where a quick feed and she should go back to sleep (as she would do for the dreamfeed).

I have nothing useful to say at all, except that my DD (7.5 months) is doing something very similar. She wakes anywhere between 4.45 and 5.30 every morning and theres not a hope of getting her to go back to sleep until she's been up to play for a while.
I bought a gro-blind so room is pitch black, she's not hungry, she's just wide awake. At 4.45. :(
I also tried putting her to bed later for a few days and she actually got up earlier- about 4am and wouldn't go back to sleep.
Friend of my DH says his LO did the same thing at about this age.
I'm hoping it's just a phase like everything else and it'll settle sometime very very very soon!
Sending lots of sympathy!!

Our DD went through this phase at this age. (She's now 9 months old) She was only having 2 naps and going to bed for 17:30 so we decided to introduce a third nap at 15:15ish for 20 minutes which saw her through until 18:00. This moved her wake up time to 06:20/06:45 so I think in our case, the early wakings were due to over tiredness.

I don't believe all babies need as much sleep as everyone suggests. Our DD now has 3 20/25 minute naps and is perfectly happy throughout the day and sleeps 12+ hours at night. Additionally I don't believe that babies should be dropping naps now unless they do it naturally, we shouldn't be forcing it. With this in mind, could you maybe reintroduce the late nap, even if you only get 15/20 minutes out of her, maybe it will be the push to morning she needs?

I usually say cut the morning nap down but I think I would start by cutting the third nap first as a pp said she should just be on two naps by now. Give it a good week to bed in.

Then I think the morning nap could do with shortening because that does affect early waking usually. Eg. 9.20 til 10am should be enough. Then the lunchtime nap will probably start getting longer if you're consistent over a few weeks. Good luck!