Controlled crying for early morning waking. Anyone tried it?

[ragtaggle]

My dd goes to sleep between seven and seven thirty every night and wakes up between four thirty and five thirty every morning - for the day! She's eight months old and my dh and I are fed up with it one us always being exhausted (We take it in turns to get up).

She doesn't want feeding at that time and is perfectly happy to wait until six or seven but she does want to play. We have blackout blinds but light does seep through and the birds outside her window seem to be particularly loud. Not a lot I can do about the birds short of going out one morning and shooting them!

We have tried bringing her in with us (works very occasionally but usually sends her in to a frenzy of excitement ) feeding her (Just makes her more awake and alert) but we haven't yet tried controlled crying. I worry that because she's already slept for tenish hours that it's not really fair to do it. I also think that it's possible that she'll have extra stamina and will keep crying for hours and hours...

I'm interested in whether anyone else has used cc for early morning waking. I can just about cope with this if I think it's just a phase that she'll grow out of (ie: when she starts crawling and using up more energy) but wonder whether I should try and nip it in the bud by teaching her that it's not a reasonable get up time. This morning it was four forty- one of the earliest times yet.. I want to start going to bed later than ten thirty!

This morning she woke at quarter to four despite room being PITCH BLACK! We just did controlled crying for three hours. She fell asleep for about twenty minutes in the middle there but god knows when that was - I lost track. My dh got her up at six forty five and she stayed up with him for an hour and a half. He then put her back to sleep and she slept for forty five minutes. Whoopee doo. I'm a bit worried actually because we got her up even though she had resolutley refused to fall back to sleep. She was actually hysterical and it was awful. Five minutes after she got up she was smiling away though which my dh took as a sign that she was pulling the wool over our eyes. I fell upon it gratefully and was just so relieved that she had 'forgiven' us. I hate it with a passion but am determined to do it again tonight to try to change her body clock. Three forty five is a new low although I did note that again we have one of the loudest dawn choruses I've ever heard, even at that time. And we live in London!

OMG RT - 3.45! That's awful - poor you and I thought I had it bad at 6am. Incidentally, DS now having nap and DH still snoring head off with dog and cat on bed with him. So much for me going back to bed. Still have washed, ironed, tidied up, emptied dishwasher etc etc. A woman's work is never done indeed........

how much is she sleeping during the day? sorry about your early waking!

Sorry to hear you're having such a hard time raggletaggle. In the days when dd was waking antisocially early and was able to spend significant periods of time playing on her own during the day we decided it was ok to go in, and give her enough light to play with a couple of toys in her cot. We're not very good at coping with a screaming child (even by ignoring it) - so we decided that if she couldn't sleep any more it was ok, as long as she didn't expect us to be playing with her.

If it's any consolation - we're having a nightmare time with her at the mo - waking at least every 2 hours between midnight and 0600, and getting increasingly difficult to re-settle. She's 8 months....and we're having difficulties getting her into bed too.

Poor you Ragtaggle. Try to stick to your guns if you can though. What method of cc are you using? I ask this because it was very important in pulling dd through her bad sleep patch. We found that the only way we could get it to work was to go in every 5, then 10, then 15 mins and literally do nothing but stroke her head or back, tell her she was ok that it was time to sleep etc. and leave within 2-3 mins. Whenever we tried anything like picking her up and putting her down it just really prolonged things. I remember the first time we did it it was at least an hour, then half an hour, then sort of stuck at about 15 mins (one visit from us), and finally then she'd go down very easily. But as I said I've never had to do this as a morning thing only so I wish you best of luck!

I did cc with my dd when she started waking at about 5 ish every morning when she was about 9 months. I was unsure whether to try it as of course then not as tired at that time so it takes much longer. Thanks to good old mumsnet I looked up and found a thread where someone had done so it inspired I gritted my teeth and did it and it worked, tried going in but that just made her worse so i left her, kept feeling is it worth but it was cos the after an hour she fell back to sleep till 8 and the next morning she slept til 7, my rule was b4 6 and she seemed to get the message. I also found that if she was overtired she wd wake early so sometimes I'd get her to have 10 mins (by hook or crook!!) about 5pm if felt she needed it. All the best you have my understanding!

I shall watch this thread with interest; I don't mind if dd2 wakes at sixish, even, because we all get up v early in this house - at about 6.30 (I don't like it but it's how we all start our working day). She's a year in a couple of weeks' time and has been waking before five....

Well you might have seen my 'desperate' thread posted at six forty five this morning and therefore know how I'm doing. But for those of you who haven't, here's the latest. She woke shouting at two thirty this morning which is really unlike her. I went in and put bonjella on her gums just in case it was her teeth although she had a big smile on her face when I went in and just seemed to want to play again. We then went in every five, ten and then fifteen minutes for the next hour, when she finally went back to sleep. Then she woke again at 4.45 and we did the same until seven o clock this morning. She never went back to sleep so I don't know if we are teaching her anything really except that if she cries for hours we will eventually go to her. I've been up with her since seven this morning and she still looks full of beans. I really don't understand it. - how can she have this much energy?!

She's always been pretty good in the past with the odd bad night when she's been ill. This is entirely new - she's not hungry and I don't think it's her teeth any more. All I can think is that while on holiday two weeks ago we went to her when she cried in the night and then one of us slept in a bed next to her sshing her when she woke. We did this because we were sharing a cottage with a few others but I think she may have got used to it.

Other possible causes are that her room is quite warm at the moment - it was 78 when she went to sleep last night although it had dropped when I went in at two thirty to 76. Because of this I put her to bed under a summer blanket in just a legless babygro. The room felt okay and she didn't feel too hot or too cold though.

One other thought is that she is getting too much or not enough daytime sleep. Can anyone tell me how much daytime sleep she should be having at this age? She tends to have three forty five minute naps. Is this too much or not enough? Sorry to ramble on - My dh and I are soooo tired and losing our sense of humour about this. I should say, by the way, that dd is an absolute delight in the day and shows no signs of having any healh problems...

at 8 months i think i'd drop one of the sleeps. my 2 were at nursery at that age. in the baby room they had 30-45 mins in the morning and an hour just after lunch.
hth

Sorry you are having such a hard time Raggletaggle, both my DD & DS were early morning wakers & it's the pits

I've just been looking through my (tatterted) copy of Richard Ferber - he suggests that in a child of your DDs age, early waking may be because that the final stage of the child's night time sleep has become "detatched" and is being taken as an early morning nap. His advice is to delay the morning nap by a little more each day to encourage the child to re-attach it to the main sleep. Does that make sense?

I looked up the amount of sleep a child needs too - a 9 month baby, on average, needs 14 hours, typically 11 at night and 3 during the day - so your DDs daytime naps sound ok. I know that many of my children's sleep problems, as babies, were improved by getting them to sleep more in the day.

I have to say that I have had limited success with stopping early waking - but I think my DD is a natural early waker (at 9 years she still wakes at 5.30) - so my chances of persuading DS (baby no. 2) to go back to sleep were low.

I really hope you can wiork something out Raggletaggle; good luck with the cc or whatever you try!

Batgirl, can I kiss you? That sounds VERY like my dd2's problem. She usually has a little kip soon after brekkie. She won't now!

I'd definitely drop one of the sleeps. She may be a baby like our DD who only had 2 x 45 mins sleep a day and gave up sleeping during the day altogether at 18 months!!! She may well extend her night time sleep then..... Just an idea, do you put her down in her cot awake or is she already asleep when you put her down? If they can learn to get themselves off to sleep then the battle is half won - it may be that she is waking and calling for you rather than putting herself back to sleep. We all naturally wake in the night for small periods of time but it is the response to this waking that may start the problem in the first place?

Sorry to disagree with poppyseed but personally I wouldn't drop one of your dd's sleeps as she's having such restless nights and early mornings as it is she will need to make up a bit of sleep in the day. I do however totally agree with what batgirl says (and I kind of tried to say it myself earlier on this thread) about the morning nap being too close to the night. You have to separate them otherwise she's having a sort of night with a 2 hour awake bit in the middle at 4.45 or whatever other ungodly hour she gets you up at.

So, with the cc when you go in are you just reassuring her etc., not picking her up? I'm amazed at her resilience! Are you sure she might not need a little drink or something? Occasionally now dd will still wake quite early and if she does I take her a cup of water, give her a drink, tell her to go back to sleep and she will. Your dd may be a bit more thirsty than usual during this weather?

Finally if you're doing the cc v. strictly (cutting corners like picking up etc. can totally ruin it), I'd try to stick with it if I were you. The first 2 days are the worst but it can take 2 weeks before it kicks in properly.

Alternatively, as this is a new one for me doing cc for early waking I wanted to clarify a few things. Someone else asked you, I think, about how she goes to sleep at bedtime / naptime? Does she go down awake? If so then you can rule out that she 'doesn't know how to get herself to sleep' and it may just be that she doesn't need cc, but just needs to adjust her body clock. It may be worth just doing the shifting to a later and later time of her morning nap first to see if that automatically alters her morning waking time?

I've just been reading through this thread in desparation, hoping to find some good tips. I shall try making the room completely dark, but I feel much happier knowing it's not just me suffering out there. I was up at 3:45am on Sunday, and it somehow made me feel so much better after reading this to know I wasn't the only one! I had to go to bed at 8:30pm last night - and I was glad I did because dd (18 months) was up at 5:00. We do bring her into our bed, because she used to be up at 6:00 and so we would all have a nice hour playing around until we got up....but now I think she is waking up and expecting to play, whatever time it is. I shall try the complete blackout and keeping her nap to an hour. And does anyone know a good concealer for my dark sleep deprived under-eye shadows????

If you let her 'recover' too much during the day, then she'll never be tired enough to go to sleep at night. If you let her have two sleeps, mid morning and mid afternoon, she may well have a longer, better quality sleep and as long as you don't let her sleep too long into the afternoon she will still be tired enough to go to sleep at night. A change of bodyclock I agree with and of course I am assuming that she isn't ill at all and just needs the attention??
Controlled crying worked with our daughter and thankfully we haven't had to do it with our son, but you need to be tough! However if they are not tired then forget it!! Chances are they will make themselves sick....
I can recommend Richard Ferbers book as well as Douglas&Richman 'My child won't sleep' and 'The New Baby and Toddler Sleep Programme by John Pearce. There are several telephone numbers you can ring ('Crysis' springs to mind, but don't have the number!!) for advice too. They were life savers for our first! Above all remember you are not the only one going through this and it will soon pass. You'll have different problems to worry about then!!

Just found the number! Crysis I think is now called 'Serene' and can be contacted on 0171 4045011 between 8am and 11pm 7 days a week. This too is a self help group. Good luck anyone who's interested!

Strangerthanfiction thankyou for putting more clearly what I was trying to say (and sorry if I missed it earlier in the thread!)

I do agree with you, too, about not dropping daytime sleep - poor sleeping at night can often be a sympton of tiredness - weird, but def true with regard to my children. I guess you have to play it by ear, though, & work out what suits your child.

I'd forgotten about Crysis/serene Poppyseed - (tho' I think the new name is optimistic!!)- they were v helpful for a friend of mine.

That's what I found too, batgirl, that if dd gets into a pattern of less and less sleep it goes on and on and gets less and less, whereas it can also turn the other way and get more and more if I play it carefully. I read somewhere that if they're over-tired at bedtime, not only do they find it hard to get to sleep but they sleep too heavily in the early part of the night and therefore wake early. That always stuck in my mind and it seemed to ring true with my dd. But like poppyseed says, some kids need less sleep than others. In ragtaggle's case it seems that her dd does need the sleep because she's doing these 3 daytime naps even though they're all quite short. The problem is going to be to get her to take all her sleep in the right blocks!

I do wonder though if there's only a problem sleeping in the early morning and the rest of the evening / naptime / bedtime sleep is fine and ragtaggle's dd goes to sleep on her own, if cc is the right approach. I'm a firm believer in it but it's mostly to teach little ones how to sleep on their own isn't it?

Hi,
My ds has never had a problem with early morning wakings needing our attention, but he does wake early (dawn chorus time) sings and chats to himself for a while, then goes back to sleep on his own until some time between 7-8 am. I'm only really aware of this because I hear him when I get up to the loo - and I'm pregnant so this is quite often! I'm certainly not wanting to show off here, but I though if I tell you what we do it may help with your little ones waking so early. I've got to say that starting the day pre-4am is my idea of hell so I hope some of this works.

(BTW we followed the Gina Ford routines v. sucesfully for the first year and while I'm not suggesting you do too I should say where a lot of this is coming from.)

I agree with the idea that an early nap may be part of the cause of early waking. As well as it being part of the night time sleep becoming detatched from the rest of the night, if a child has a long morning sleep they will not want another nap until much later, and it may be too short to keep them going until bedtime or it will be too close to bedtime so bedtime gets really late. Then they are overtired at bedtime, fall into a very deep sleep early in the evening, and are restless through the rest of the night and may wake early. Plenty of day time sleep is really important, but we kept the morning nap short, at 8 months probably only 30 mins, so that the later, after-lunch nap was long, perhaps 2 -2.5 hours. Total sleep in 24 hours was then about 14.5 to 15 hours, 12 hours of this being at night.
As someone said, the more they sleep, the more they sleep.

We are strict about bedtimes and bedtime routine. We're more flexible now, but at 8 months ds was was nearly always in bed and asleep by 7pm.

We leave no toys, books, etc in the cot. I think if he has nothing to play with when he wakes up he's more likely to get bored and fall asleep again.

We never rush in the moment he wakes, ever. He's always been left to chat to himself for at least 10 mins. These days he will entertain himself alone in his cot for an hour after he wakes up so I can get showered, dressed, put the wash on, etc, etc. He thinks of bed as being a nice place to be and he regularly gets left there during the day for short spells while I do stuff.

His room is pretty dark but not pitch black.

He always, always falls asleep on his own, no rocking or feeding etc to sleep.

I did use cc to lengthen the after-lunch nap when he cut it back to just over an hour and he really needed longer, I think when he was about 6 months old. I went in every 10 mins and patted him and told him to go back to sleep. He didn't but after a couple of days he was sleeping much longer.

I really hope some of this helps. Please keep posting at tell us how you're doing.

Just looked in at this. Thank you so much for all your comments/suggestions - it's so nice to know, also, that I'm not alone.

Last night was night three since we embarked on cc and my dh and I had long standing tickets to a gig that we couldn't face missing. So we trotted out like zombies after having to put dd down at 6.30! (The gig started at 7.30 across town) She went down, knackered, like a dream and the babysitter heard nothing from her all night. We got home at twelve thirty and at one thirty she cried out - just when we'd got into a really deep sleep. We thought we were in for a horror but actually I went in put the obligatory bonjella on her gums (just in case) and we didn't hear from her again until five thirty. Given that she went down at 6.30 we didn't really feel we could blame her for this - she'd still slept for eleven hours and it's certainly an improvement. So we didn't bother with cc - dh just got up (it was his turn) and she was full of beans until he put her back to bed two and a half hours later. Unusually, she slept for an hour and a half at this point. I should say that we'd never normally allow this - she has forty five minutes at the most - but we were both so grateful for the extra sleep we didn't fight it.

I'll try and tackle all the questions that have arisen in this thread re: her routine. Firstly, we always put her down awake and she is usually pretty good at going down. In the evening she's fantastic - we rarely get more than two minutes of crying, if that. She goes down after a routine that we have been doing for ages - solids, a bath, milk - and she seems very happy. She goes down between seven and seven thirty, a time that suits us all.

I have the Ferber book and first started doing cc when dd was about six months to cut out some four am waking we suddenly started getting. It was pretty successful then for about a month. It took two nights and was pretty painless then - she shouted but didn't cry. Things have gone a bit haywire since she got her teeth but since then and a subsequent holiday it's all gone a bit haywire.

We don't rush to her in the night - we always leave it at least ten minutes during which time she goes from shouting to getting quite upset. She is always the most upset after we leave the room. We never pick her up, unless it's to offer a drink but simply pat and sshh her. In this hot weather I've been taking in water but she simply bats it out of my hand angrily after an initial suck. All she wants is for us to get up with her and play. Something we're currently refusing to do at four thirty in the morning.

Regarding the morning nap - I might try to cut it out all together (Something that GF suggests) in an attempt to get her to sleep longer at lunch time. She never sleeps for more than forty five minutes at lunch time and i always have to give her a 'catch up' sleeep later in the day so she's not hanging before bed. Today I only allowed her twenty minutes as she'd had an hour and a half in the morning and only thirty minutes at lunch time.

I know I should try to make her sleep for longer for this lunch time nap but tbh I don't really have the heart. Partly because I really don't want a battle during the day as well as the night - also she has a lot of energy and could probably keep going for hours. So I think I'll try cutting out the morning nap although I know she'll be hanging. She always looks more than ready to go back to bed after two and a half hours. Wouldn't you be if you'd got up at four? I know I am but somehow forty five minutes doesn't really do it for me! Wish me luck tonight. Better go to bed. My turn tonight and it's already eleven. Will I never learn?

ragtaggle, it will be hard to get her through without the morning nap but you have to try something. My ds used to wake ludicrously early - when he was one (and I should say - he has always slept alot for his age) we decided enough was enough and we cut his morning nap. For about a week we had to torture him awake and had to bring forward lunch a bit so that he wasn't falling asleep in his food (literally!). So for a week, he had no morning nap and he had lunch at 11am (so that he ate before he passed out) then had a 2-3 hour nap. Once he was awake he didn't need anymore sleep for the rest of the day until he went down like a shot at 7pm. I'm not saying your dd will do this but if you intend on dropping that morning nap, be prepared for exhaustion during the morning and perhaps an early lunch. Also, try for a few days not to go anywhere in the morning because she will probably fall asleep in the car/pushchair.

I should also say that after a week of doing that, my ds started waking up between 7am and 8am. We noticed that from that point onwards, if he ever slept in the morning it would herald an early rising whereas if he had a good lunchtime nap with no morning nap, he would always 'sleep in'.

It's hard work but it's definitely worth the effort. We've never looked back since then and now he almost never wakes up before 7am and he's nearly 3. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

ragtaggle, from what you're describing I now really wonder if cc is the thing you need to do or if rescheduling the naps wouldn't work better. You needn't go too quickly, why not move the morning nap half an hour later each day until it's closer to lunchtime rather than cut it altogether? She could have her nap around 10ish then lunch after and a mid-afternoon nap for instance. The main thing is to stop her getting the end of her night time sleep first thing in the morning.

Was the gig good by the way? Who did you go to see? (just being nosy now!)

Thanks strangerthanfiction and foxinsocks (Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd utter) Today I am trying the rescheduling of naps technique. DD didn't do too badly last night - seven until five - but it's still far too early in my humble opinion. So today we only went in once after five and she shouted until I went and got her at five forty five. Interestingly, without us going in it never really escalated but stayed at a shout (Albeit a very persistent one) Three hours after she got up I let her have a twenty minute nap and then I woke her up (Ha ha - revenge is sweet) I gave her some more milk at 10.15 (Her last bottle was five forty five and she was hanging) but only three ounces so as not to put her off her lunch. I then gave her lunch at 11.15! I put her to bed at eleven forty five because she was in danger of completely zombifying. She managed to eat a good lunch before she totally collapsed though. It's now forty five minutes later and I'm waiting with bated breath. And as I do so some workmen are banging REALLY LOUDLY outside her window. I feel like that mum on the Catherine Tate show ('So inconsiderate. I can tell they don't have children"

Anyway, someone asked me what gig I went to and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it was Peter Gabriel. My dh has always been a massive fan and I've always taken the piss, imagining liking him to being akin to liking Phil Collins. Monday night was dh's chance to show me how wrong I am - he spent loads of money on tickets for that very purpose, which is why we couldn't drop out. I have to admit to having a fantastic time. I'm still not sure about all his music but the gig was so spectacular that even when I got bored of the songs there was plenty to look at. The lighting was incredible and he does all sorts of weird things like walk on the ceiling, trot around in a huge plastic ball - you had to be there!

Anyway, will update on how this nap shifting thing goes. I love the idea of two to three hours every lunch time, fox!

well fingers crossed that she has a nice nap and gives you a break!

I'm amazed you had the energy to go to a concert after waking so early but it's true how you always feel better once you're out, no matter how tired you are! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

have to go as I'm being pestered by my youngest to play 'shopping list' (oh the joys...!). I really hope things get. better.