Early mornings... PLEASE HELP!!!

[GeeCee]

Hi everyone,
I'm desperate... and seeking any advice!!
My one year old son is waking at 5.10 every morning. We've tried all the obvious things (going to bed later, black-out blinds etc) but nothing we do seems to make a difference. At the moment we're taking it in turns to get up, and going to bed v early... but can't sustain this. Does anyone have any tips about what to do???? His routine is (roughly)

Wakes 5:10
Boob 6ish (if we can manage to delay that long)
B'fast 7:30
(Sometimes sleeps in the car, at 8ish, for about 20 mins)
Snack 10ish
Nap sometime between 10 and 11, for 40 minutes (usually - v occ'l;y he sleeps up to an hour and a quarter, but rare)
Lunch - 1
Snack
Nap - mid afternoon
Supper 6ish
Boob
Bed - between 7-7:30. Goes off easily, and rarely wakes in the night.

So generally he is a good sleeper (and I feel bad complaining!), but we'd really like to sort out this morning thing. We think he needs more sleep as he is usually grumpy when he wakes up, and often falls asleep in the car first thing (on the way to creche)... we've tried avoiding this, and delaying his morning nap (a Ferber idea - see Ragtaggle's post about this a while ago), but have done it for a little over 2 weeks now, and it doesn't seem to help.

So - any tips anyone???!!!
Thanks!
gcxxx

God knows. Inferiority Complex v similar at moment. Can't even delay boob that long. Going bananas. AND have three year old.

Blackout linings helped v slightly (they don't cover our whole curtain!) and so do toys in the cot for her to play with when she wakes up...

GeeCee, is it a recent thing? Does it coincide with the summer? My dd always wakes earlier in the summer than in the winter even though we have blackout curtains etc. I think nature just wakes up earlier too. I find it awful to have to get up before 6 but generally we're 'lucky' in that dd rarely wakes before 6.30 and the last 2 days has slept til a blissful 7.30. But I truly can't tell you why. Nothing in her routine changed in any way. The only thing I can put it down to is, as I say, the summer, because yesterday and this morning were very cloudy so her room was darker and there weren't so many birds up.

This isn't a helpful reply but to be honest I don't know, beyond the Ferber idea of moving morning naps later, of any solution and so many parents seem to have this problem. My friend's little boy has woken at 5am since he was about 6 months old and he's now 3.5!!! She has done EVERYTHING you can think of even taken him to a sleep councillor. He no longer has a daytime nap at all so it's nothing to do with that. It just seems that some of our little darlings have early morning body clocks. Even GF says she doesn't know what one can do about early rising. And Ferber, beyond that one suggestion says there's not much else you can do except for go to bed early yourself.

Very unsatisfying I know. Sorry, wish I could help.

Mine both did this and I'm afraid nothing we tried worked. The good news is they both grew out of it but I know what hell it is when it's happening. I think the way we dealt with it was accept that's the way it was going to be and not drive ourselves mad looking for solutions that never seemed to work.

In fact, thinking about it there was something which worked for ds1. We got a Winnie the Pooh alarm clock (like the rabbit clock people often talk about) so that he knew if it was too early to be awake. That worked really quickly when he was about 18 months old - maybe one to bear in mind for when your ds is a bit bigger.

I remember endless mornings slumped half-asleep on the sofa with ds1 watching TV. Then ds2 came along and wasn't even interested in watching TV so we had to be properly awake which was even worse. It's awful but I'm sure it will get better - we can pretty much guarantee 6.30am these days (ds2 is nearly 2) and this morning it was 7.10. I couldn't believe it ...