4am starts - please help before I go mad!

[worriedmum100]

9 month old DS has been waking persistently at 4am for weeks. We are really starting to struggle with the exhaustion.

He is a very active happy baby. He is crawlibg and pulling up. He eats 3 meals a day and rarely has milk in the day anymore unless he seems particularly hungry or hasn't eaten much which is rare. He hasn't had a night feed or dream feed since he was 6 months old.

His current schedule is:

4am - wakes screaming and crying. Wants company.Not hungry as far as I can tell. Change nappy if necessary. Won't settle. Bring him into our bed where he leaps about, climbs the bed frame, babbles loudly, clambers on top of us, gives us a pinch etc

5am - 9 oz bottle

5.30 - short doze in our bed in DPs "nook"

6am - wakes. 5 year old DS joins us. (I lose will to live).

7am - downstairs for breakfast.

8am - 9.30 - usually a 40 minute to an hour nap at some point

11.30- 12 lunch

12 -2 ish - long nap (sometimes less sometimes a little more)

4.30-5 - tea

6.30 - bath, 9oz bottle, bed

He goes down like a dream (always has). He'll then usually wakes briefly a few times in the night but goes straight back if we pop the dummy in...Until 4am....

He's never slept later than 5.30 and only did that a couple of times. It's been worse since he had a bad bout if the pox a few weeks ago.

We may have made it worse by getting into the habit of bringing him in with us but we're so exhausted it feels easier to do that then physically get up with him. My eldest DS was sleeping til 6am at this age and we would give him a morning bottle in his room then he would go straight back down til 7.30 .

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Sorry for any typos.....V tired....

Thanks. Think there is definitely room for more snacks!

I agree that actually it doesn't sound like that much food. Mine would have fruit / yoghurt after lunch and dinner and a snack mid morning too

Worriedmum, my 9 month old has all but dropped milk so I am constantly trying to give him nutritious food as I worry about what he is missing out on by not having milk. He has dropped to around 7oz a day (4 in morning, 3 before bed) so I have to give him a multivitamin too.

However, he eats great. Today he had a whole weetabix with banana for brek plus more banana to munch on afterwards, shepherds pie with veg for lunch, Ella's fruit pouch for a snack in the afternoon and scrambled eggs, mushrooms and beans for dinner with a little bit of yogurt afterwards. I do do finger food meals at lunchtime sometimes but as I said I worry about his diet due to not taking milk so I usually try and give him proper meals for both lunch and dinner.

Up until around a month ago he was up at 5am every morning like clockwork and I was on my knees with exhaustion plus he was just ratty and tired all day. I fed him as soon as he woke, in a dark room, with minimal interaction, burped him and then put him down again. At first he resisted it so I just kept going back in, resettling him and leaving him to it again. I let him have a bit of a moan for a while but he started dropping back off and now I am very strict in putting him straight back down after that quick 5am feed, always treating it like nighttime so he got used to it and now goes back down til 7ish although it can take him 20-30 mins to settle again sometimes.

Why don't you try feeding him his 9oz as soon as he wakes up, in his room (gro blind for window to block out all light) and put him back down again with a view to him adjusting slowly to the fact that 4/5am most definitely is not the bloody morning!! I know you have to be semi awake to do this and it's a pain in the bum but it pays off long term. Then you can adjust naps according (mine now does 9am-10ish and then 1.5-2 hrs in the afternoon, usually 2-4).

Have totally jinxed myself now by posting this and he's going to be up at 4.30 for the day tomorrow now I just know it!!

Just to check...you've blacked out the windows to meth lab standards, yes? If not that could be your very simple answer. My DS was sensitive to even the smallest sliver of light creeping round the edges.

He's got a blind (not blackout) then black out curtains over that.

I agree that it would be preferable to feed him in his room in the dark and put him straight back down. That's what we did with DS1 (albeit 2 hours later!). DP and I disagree on this though as he is so knackered he can't stomach the thought of having to go into him rather than bring him into our bed where we can at least doze. He also worries that feeding him at 4 will cement a habit of waking at 4. As things are we can string him out until 5ish. It's weird that the crying stops when we bring him into bed and he seems quite happy to wait an hour for his bottle which suggests to me that it's habit/company rather than hunger but I fully accept I could be wrong!

I can see DPs point and to be fair it is DP that takes the bulk of the 4am burden as I'm utterly hopeless at that time. I can sort of function in that I can move about grunt etc but DP is usually the one that sorts the milk and does the feeding and takes the brunt of DS2 clambering all over him while I lie there semi conscious

Tonight we've done a later bedtime and stuffed him as full as possible with an added snack of rice cakes houmous and chicken, then pasta bolognaise and left over porridge for tea and then 9oz milk. Will report back in the morning.....

How did last night go?

He slept solidly from 7.30 until......4am!

But rather than bring him into our bed I shushed and re-dummied him on and off until 5. He dozed but didn't fall back asleep. So at 5 I gave him his bottle in his room in the dark. He was basically asleep by the time he'd finished it so I put him back down. Took a few goes but he was fast asleep again by 5.30 a d we had to wake him at 7!

So I think we'll keep doing thst and hopefully his body clock will adjust so that he wakes for milk somewhere around a happy medium between 4 and 7

My 4year old has been doing similar for a few weeks. I'm guessing it's a
Combination of horrid stuffy weather and light mornings.

Is your babies room dark enough? Black
Out blind could help X

Good stuff. Sounds v similar to what we do now and it's so much more preferable to have them go back to sleep in their cot, even if it takes a little while, so that you can have a little bit more undisturbed sleep. I also have a 2.5 year old who gets up between 6-7 so I race against the clock every morning to get a bit more sleep before she wakes up!

Whatever we tried Ds woke at 5, he clearly has a 5am internal alarm clock, so I'm also hoping that this stretches over time so that he wakes later for the morning feed. having said that he woke at 3am last night for a feed but then slept til 6.30. He's a bit off colour at the mo though so was kind of expecting a funny night.

Agree with pp's about shifting things back - but its not just bedtime that needs to shift, its his whole routine - particularly the day naps. My ds was a persistent early waker & the only thing that cracked it for us was moving his daytime naps later. We found that offering a long/early morning nap (at around 8am) just reinforced the early waking. As your ds also sleeps at this time (in addition to a 5.30am snooze), I would suggest slowly pushing that back by 15 mins every few days, til it starts at 9am, possibly even 9.30am. The afternoon nap will also be pushed back which means you will no longer need to have the 4pm cat nap, and he should more easily reach a slightly later bedtime. This, combined with a later teatime & bedtime feed should hopefully help him sleep til a more reasonable time of morning.

I would really just give him the bottle when he wakes up at 4am and then put him back down, re-settling at necessary. I don't see the logic in holding off giving him the bottle until 5am? It won't 'cement a habit' of him needing feeding at that time, I promise!

(My 9mo who's also a great eater, but not very interested in milk anymore, still usually wakes for a night feed around 4-5am. I think that's really normal)

How was last night OP?

I agree with Ifnot there doesn't seem much point in delaying feeding him, though if he's like my DD it might not help in terms of getting him back to sleep quicker. She generally seems to need to be awake for about 1.5 hours at that time before going back down again, whether I feed her straight away or not... this morning she woke at 4.20, fed her, put back in cot with white noise, gave up after half an hour of on/off screaming and brought her into bed with me, where she finally calmed down and dropped off after about 15 min and then slept until just after 7. I wouldn't mind co-sleeping for that last stretch, or feeding her, if we could just cut out the need for all the screaming!

Unfortunately we had a very bad night with hourly waking. Then a prolonged waking between 2-3 then a wake up at 4.20. He was really upset so I think there's definitely a developmental thing going on as he seems to just want one of us with him. He's been the same today. Very clingy which is unlike him. We went swimming today which he usually loves but he cried a lot and cling to me

I'm absolutely exhausted.

Oh dear, that's not good. Fx for a better night tonight!

Same here with my little one. He's usually very happy, placid and naps fairly easily but today he's been moaning and clinging to me all day, won't sleep or eat much and is generally just not in a good place. Am also exhausted with trying to placate him. Must be something in the air.