5 am wake up...

[Carty76]

For about 3 weeks now my 9 month old has been waking up anywhere between 5-5:30 am but is clearly not ready to wake up as she is yawning and rubbing her eyes and generally being a bit crabby which isn't like her.

We have been taking her downstairs and giving her her milk which she is t draining at all so doubt it's hunger waking her. An example is this morning she woke at 5:10 and stared yaw I g at 6:45 so she has now gone down for a sleep.

She does have two naps a day, it's supposed to be 30 min one in the Mr u g an da long nap in the afternoon. These early. Or inganhave shifted things so she's sleeping longer of a morning now. Arrghhh! Do I accept that she is just an early riser even though I don't believe she is? I've read a lot about pushing her nap back by 5 mins until she can get to 9:00am. I have no idea how I could get her to last as she is knackered!!

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Is it daylight waking her at 5?

If so could you get blackout blinds?

That might be a possibility but I don't know why I doubt it is. Her nursery is quite dark when her blind is down. We do have a blackout blind so will put it up today...

could you try and treat it as a night waking and feed her in her room, dark, don't change her and try and get her back to sleep? It can take time but sometimes it's just a case of resetting their body clock. Are cars, birds or something waking her?

We've tried the feeding her in her room thing....I think you're spot on, I think she's now gotten her little body clock all confused.

Is she sleeping through or being fed in the night?

If she is fed when you go to bed, I would drop this feed and instead accept a night feed for a time. But a quick feed at 3am and then sleeping to 7am is better that up for the day at 5am!

If she is not having any night feeds, try waking her when you go to bed. It seems odd to wake a sleeping baby without any need but the idea is to re-set her body clock so that she 'thinks' it is the start of the night (rather than the fact she's been asleep for a few hours already). This is a version of a technique called 'Wake to Sleep'.

So wake her when you go to bed, change her nappy. Maybe give her a small drink, or maybe not if not night feeding is important to you. Personally I'd offer a bit of milk after the nappy change. Then put her back to bed as you do when it is first bedtime.

She's sleeping through. Has been for a good while, with the exception of on the odd odd night popping her in to give her her dummy.

Someone else has mentioned the wake to sleep thing. The thought of it just freaks me out!!

I personally wouldn't wake her. We had this exact same problem with our now 9 month old DD. I ttried pushing the morning nap to closer to 9 but she then became overtired and missed that nap entirely which then had a knock effect for bedtime sleep.

We decided one morning that we just wouldn't get her out of the cot until at least 7am. If she got really upset we would go in and reassure her but in the main, after being upset, she was talking to herself and she then drifted off until 720. This was about 3 weeks and it's pretty much stayed this way now.

We thought the only way to stop the early wakings was to not "reward" them with getting her up. She was clearly still very tired and was rubbing her eyes as soon as we took her downstairs.

Maybe you could try leaving her in the cot and checking on her periodically if she's upset?

When I say stayed this way, I mean she now wakes between 7-730 instead of 5-530. She goes to bed between 6-630 and sleeps right through. She is much happier for the extra couple of hours too.

Definitely try to hold out until 9:30 for first morning nap and then only let her an hour max. Naps too soon after rising encourage early waking as they just use the morning nap to continue the night sleep they should have had.

Also, I have always made my DS stay in his cot for a little while after waking as I don't want him to think waking up = instantly getting up.