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!

Hi

My DS is 9 months old now and has had a bit of a difficult start. With one thing and another he has been in and out of hospital quite a bit which I think has made him anxious.
Anyway, he sleeps terribly! We have a really good bedtime routine which we have done pretty much forever and he goes off to sleep between 6.30 and 7. He will then wake 2 or 3 times before midnight 1am when I will give him 4oz of milk (he is underweight for his age and have decided to keep this bottle on for now). He then generally sleeps til around 4ish. We then struggle to keep him asleep until 5. At 5 he believes his day should start.

We are exhausted and have tried pretty much everything apart from CC. We feel that we couldn't put ourselves (or him) through this because he is quite highly strung and gets worked up into a lather v quickly. My gut instinct tells me it would be wrong but I would love anybody else's experiences or advice. We are desparate.

Hi everyone,

Haven't read all the messages but thought I'd share my experiences. Sorry if it's repeating things other people have mentioned.

We have 2 daughters and both went through phases of early waking. Our first would wake up at 5.30 am from about 9 months to 14 months and the second woke up at 5.11 am on the dot every morning from 9 - 20 months. We tried putting them to bed later and this did nothing apart from result in tired, grumpy babies at 5am. I talked to health visitors and looked at all the baby books and they all pretty much agreed that if you have an early riser - tough.

Controlled crying is only useful if you want your baby to fall asleep again exhausted at 7am when everyone else is waking up. My DP and I concentrated on management strategies instead. We had a lates and earlies policy - we would each have an alternate evening where it was our responsiblity to get up during the night if required and then early in the morning. That way we could each be guaranteed a full night of sleep every other day. We tried putting extra toys in the cot to amuse them for 30 minutes extra before they shouted for us. The eldest was pretty good at sitting on our bedroom floor watching a teletubbies video while we grabbed an extra 30 minutes of semi-sleep.

In the end it was only dropping day time sleeps that resulted in our two sleeping later in the morning. We're now on the go from about 6 - 6.30 am which is quite civilised as far as we're concerned!

One extra thing - both our girls had trouble with ear infections and glue ear. Fluid behind the ear drum creates enormous pressure and children can only lie horizontally for a couple of hours at a time before they get excrutiating shooting pains behind the ear drum. If your children are waking regularly and seem to be distressed, it may be worth taking them to the GP to have their ears checked out. Ours ended up with grommets which helped enormously.

Dear ragtaggle, and all other unwilling early risers. Thought I'd commiserate on the lack of lie ins & living with a Peter Gabriel fan.
Dd is nearly 16 months old and usually up at 0530, she sleeps from 7pm, usually wakes once or twice briefly in the night,has a nappy change, or a little milk, ie 80mls, then she's up..SO happy, full of the joys of spring....I'm hoping it's a phase, but am currently just getting up with her, chucking on a teletubbies video and snatching a snooze on the sofa.. when not being pummeled with books etc.. She's been through 2 lots of jetlag with a long trip to the UK, adapted back within a week each time. Just wish I knew a majic formula for getting her to lie in.
As well as being a Peter Gabriel fan, my partner grinds his teeth and snores like a donkey, ( ah the joys)...I cope by us taking it in turns to get up with dd..and sleeping with earplugs on my night off, or getting my partner to sleep on the sofabed...It's a bugger, I used to be able to sleep through the snoring, but now have baby tuned ears, so am woken really easily. Anyone got any tips on muting a noisy partner?
Love this website, good to hear how everyone else gets on/ doesn't get on with things. Good luck.

Hi OxJo,
We had another 5:15 wake up today... better than 4:55, which was y'day. We had thought it was getting better as before the last couple of days we were averaging 5:30-6:00. But obviously not.... How ridiculous when 6am seems like a lie in!! We just take it in turns... and try to get to bed by 9pm!!
AAAAAaaarghhh!
gx