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!

Sounds good ragtaggle (apart from the Peter Gabriel bit, ahem), I think you're doing exactly the right thing. It worked with dd though I have to say she was knackered when we first cut back her morning sleep. Then at 16 months we dropped a morning nap altogether and she was utterly 'hanging' as you put it! She'd lie down on the floor and say 'tired, lie down bed' etc. but I stuck to it and although now she's 20 months she can go from getting up in the morning to an 11.30 lunch and nap around 12-12.30 for anything between 1.5-3 hours.

So far, so good. She had an hour and a half for lunch which is the most she's had in ages. I am now planning to keep her awake until she goes down at seven. Wish me luck.

Sounds good. When is it? Can I bring matchsticks for my eyes?

This rescheduling of naps feels like it might work! After sleeping for an hour and a half at lunch time dd didn't sleep for the rest of the day. Edgy by the end but not too bad. She slept like a dream from seven until five, when she woke crying. I went in after seven minutes (Bursting for the loo and it's next to her room) She felt cold, as the fan had been on all night . I turned it off and bugger me if she didn't go back to sleep until five forty five! Okay, so it's not exactly late but she is NEVER usually tired at this time. Today we have kept her up until ten and now I am going to let her have just twenty minutes sleep in order to get a proper lunch time nap in. I decided I couldn't leave her until twelve - seven hours awake for a baby of her age is tantamount to torture. She just fell asleep as soon as her head hit the cot and I know it will be hard to wake her in twenty minutes but it's the only way she'll do more than forty five at lunch time. I'm going to put her back down at 12.30 hoping that she sleeps until at least two.. Will keep posting just in case anyone else has been having this problem. This rescheduling of naps is far more the answer than cc I think. (And not half as sould destroying) When she was only doing forty five at lunch time she was having to have another sleep late afternoon and I think that may have messed with her night time sleep. Too early to jump for joy but watch this space.....

Excellent! Pleased to hear the news is better for you. This all sounds so similar to my DD and at the moment I am doing something similar with DS who's 13 months. I keep him awake from the morning (6.30/7ish)until about 11ish and then put him down after he's had a snack. He'll have 2 hours then and after a late lunch will go through until bedtime at 7pm. He's sufficiently tired then to go to sleep but has had enough sleep during the day to make him pleasant to be with!! I am sure that you'll find the best routine for you all, hang in there!!

Good for you ragtaggle, I didn't think from what you were describing that this was a cc problem as your dd can already get to sleep on her own so what would you be training her for? I find with my dd that it she's had a good night and good sleeps the previous day then she's more likely to go back to sleep if she wakes early as she's sort of nicely drowsy rather than tiredly wiredly awake.

well done ragtaggle. So glad this is working for you! Fingers crossed that it continues. The long sleep at lunchtime has always been the key I think (rather than scattered naps) so WELL done. I'm sure if it all continues, her waking will get progressively later.

Incidentally, I don't know which part of London you are in but I think some of the birds that have been visiting you have popped along to my part of London and at 4am this morning the loudest bl**dy magpie in England decided to squawk for about an hour! I was leaning out of the bedroom window shouting at it until I realised how ridiculous I must have looked!

I wonder if they have this problem in the country?!

Dd slept for one and a half hours again today at lunch time -12.30-2.00. Will leave it for fifteen minutes before we go to her tomorrow morning (Bladder permitting) as advised by Ferber

when we visit mother in law (in the country), I hardly hear the birds at all.

Its a London conspiracy. Magpies and blackbirds/crows are definitely the worst and I think they seem to be breeding mutant size ones at the moment because some of them seem to be the size of the average cat! (not that I'm obsessed or anything..)

PS great news about the lunch time sleep. I hope you are at least getting a bit of a rest around that time now!

It's the crows that kill me in the mornings ... horribly ugly noise that just goes on and on. I lie in bed half asleep and dream of obliterating them as though they were figures on a space invader machine. And I'm an animal lover!!!

Thank you so much for your advice you lot. This morning dd woke at ten to five and my heart sank. I went in to her to find that she had her head wedged up against the bars and a summer blanket off. I turned her round and tucked her in, left the room and guess what? She slept until six! And I have to say she still looked quite tired when I got up with her then. (Tomorrow we'll leave it a bit before we go in but one step at a time) If she goes until six each day I'll be happy - thrilled if it's seven but realistically I'll be happy with six. It feels like this is really working. So thank you so much for your advice. I won't presume this is it yet but so far, so good. Rescheduling naps was definitely the answer. And I'm enjoying my one and a half hours at lunch time. Wonderful. Now if she could only do two and a half.....

That's fantastic ragtaggle, it does seem like it's working.

Hi Ragtaggle,
Can you briefly outline your nap routine pls? I've been droppping in and out of this conversation, as my almost one year old is waking at 5ish every morning. I've been trying to delay giving him his first feed 'til 6, in the hope he'll start sleeping later, but it doesn't seem to be helping. He goes off to sleep v easily every night between 7 and 7:30 and we rarely hear a squeek out of him... but 5 is really too early. Don't know what the 'ideal' nap routine is - and might be hard to do as he is at a creche 3 days a week... but worth a try! ALso - he usually only naps for about half an hour - so how on earth to stretch that to more than an hour???!
thanks,
gc

Hi ceegee. Right, here it is..

5.00: Dd wakes up
5.30: Milk (Between 5-6 0zs)
7.00: Cereal and toast
10.00: Short nap - wake her up after twenty minutes (I am keeping her up for a deliberately long time to get her to wake earlier but should just be a temporary measure. When she starts waking at seven this nap will not alter)
10.20: Get her up
11.00: Snack of 3 ounces of milk. ( Enough to assuage hunger, not enough to put her off lunch)
11.45: Feed her solids (lunch)
12-12.30: Put her to bed somewhere between
these times
1.30-2.00: She wakes up somewhere between these times
2.15: 4oz milk as 'snack'
5.00: Solids. two course dinner
6.30: Bath
7.00: Bed and 8 ounces of milk

Hope this helps! Let me know how you get on

That should say 'to get her to wake later' - doh! I do not want her to wake any earlier!

Thanks Ragtaggle,
This morning he slept thro' to 6:30... don;t know if it was chance... could be the fact that I velcroed down the black0out blinds to get rid of every last bit of light, or it could be because he was up in the night for half an hour (teething, I think), so we gave him Medised at 3am... maybe it was that which knocked him out. Anyway, we will keep trying to delay his morning nap, and see what happens!
Keep us posted with how you progress!
gcx

Hi Ragtaggle,
How are you getting on? Are things continuing to get better?
Y;day was obviously a fluke, and today it was back to 5am... so it isn't the light causing the problem.
Do let us know if shifting the naps has worked!
gc

Hi - been following this thread on and off for a while - my 6 mo ds has been waking at approx 5am every morning for the last couple of months, despite blackout blinds, dream feeds etc. Sometimes, feeding works but most of the time, he's raring to go. I came to the conlusion a while ago that I'd just have to 'go with the flow' and go to bed early.

The advice about the early morning naps has got me thinking - my ds normally has at least 2 hrs on a morning (from approx 9.30) and I wonder if I try to gently shorten it bit by bit (I think he still needs over an hour at that age), if that will work. Am willing to give anything a go!! Fingers crossed

MiriamR, why don't you shorten the morning sleep and lengthen the afternoon one? At 6 months my dd was sleeping about 30 mins in the morning and 2-3 in the afternoon and wasn't waking til about 7.30am in the morning. A 2 hour morning nap does seem a bit long even for that age, I'd imagine your ds is using that long nap to make up for his lost night sleep.

I just wrote you a reply Ceegee but don't know where it's gone! Anyway, quick update. She now wakes at about five forty every day, which is an improvement - however slight. Yesterday it was six twenty but I suspect a flook. But it was definitely worth doing because she hasn't woken anywhere near four or four thirty all week . And five forty is at least twenty minutes shy of six so I can get my head round about it a bit more....

I guess at least its improving ragtaggle...sometimes it takes a while for their bodies to accept and adapt to a new routine! I just hope the waking continues to get later.

MiriamR, I would definitely agree with strangertf advice. The little nap in the morning and long one in the afternoon always seems conducive to a good night sleep and later waking in the morning.

Mine haven't woken up in the nights for a while now and I feel absolutely knackered having got up the last two nights to give them drinks and then take them for wees around 2 hours later gggrrr!