6 mo waking super early!

[Bethan2]

Hi all,

For the last two weeks or so, my 6 mo son is sleeping from about 6/7pm but his current habit is waking up for the day from about 5.30am 😯. He used to wake around 1am and 5am for a feed and then go back to sleep until around 7.30, which is fine. Now he sleeps all night until 5.30, wakes for grub and then is all alert and happy and doesn't want to go back to sleep 😣. My husband ignored him this morning until 6.30 but he cried loads and I can't face doing that but not sure what to do. We don't open curtains, chat to him etc but turn light off after feeding but he's not interested in going back to sleep. He's more interested in practicing going onto his tummy. Sigh...

Any ideas? Anyone else experienced this issue?

Thanks for reading!

I hate to say it but 5.30am is not uncommon as a wake up time, especially as a temporary phase, for babies/toddlers. I don't have any hints as I had one very early riser (who at 3 now sleeps in till 7am) and one who I struggle to get out of bed. Both treated the same but just different! For the early riser we had slight improvement by blacking out the room. And if he's sleeping from 6pm to 5.30am then that is 11.5hrs. As unbroken sleep that is phenomenal for a 6 month old!!!!!

Don't ignore him is he's been asleep for 11.5hrs. He's clearly very hungry if he has dropped his night feeds.

Thanks so much Cakes! X

You could try a feed when you go back to bed, to see if that helps with early mornings.

But primarily remember that 11h sleep at night is to be expected, so if you are hoping for a 7am wake, you'd be better with an 8pm bedtime.

If he goes to bed at 6 and wakes at 5.30, that's 11.5 hours sleep. That's more than enough sleep. My 6 month old gets between 10.5 and 12 hours sleep a night. I'd never expect him to do more. He goes to sleep at 8 so his wake up like fate says is more reasonable.

Sometimes if I need to shower/do jobs I'll feed him and put him back to bed while I do that, and very often he does drift off to sleep after about 20 minutes of cooing. But I'd never leave him to get upset and distressed.

My DS sleeps for the same amount but we put him to bed between 8 and 9. If we put him down at 7 he'd be awake at 6 easily, so we put his bedtime back. He has a snooze at teatime for half an hour and then has his last feed at about 8.

Thanks so much Fate, Ask and Fruity. Yes I'd love him to go to sleep around 8 and wake around 6.30 but unfortunately we did try putting him to bed later but he still woke up early 😔. Also his last nap finishes around 5pm and we aim to have him asleep 2 hours later. Any later than that and he gets overtired and super cranky 😣. This is the same pattern he is in throughout the day; we put him down for a nap after two hours of wake time as he shows tired signs and he goes to sleep no problem.

Are his naps still short, frequent naps? Or have you moved to longer naps 2 or 3 set times of the day?

You could move naps around. Or in fact they will move around as his sleep needs develop. So that will move and change the last nap and also the ideal bedtime.

If you do move naps to move bedtime, to then make wake-up time later (rather than waiting for him to change things himself), it will need 2 or 3 weeks to establish. Putting him to bed later one night and him still waking at the same the next day is not enough to base any assumptions on.

Thanks again Fate! Sorry for the late reply 😔. His naps are pretty consistent (2 to 2 hours 15 mins awake time) so depends what time he wakes up for the day and then his last nap tends to finish around 4pm (he gets into a pattern for a few days / weeks then it can change a bit!) We take him up for bed around 6pm and he's asleep around 7pm. He is still waking around 5am but since I first posted, he has started going back to sleep after feeding, which is nice so hopefully a step in the right direction!!

Best wishes

Oops forgot to say, he naps for around 30 mins or an hour 10! About 3 hours in total per day x