The dreaded early wake ups!!!

[user1492964816]

Hi

My little one is 7 months nearly- for the last 3/4 weeks he has been doing really well at night usually 7.15pm-6.00am. However the last 3/4 nights I'm worried a habit is developing - as he started waking 5ish and now is doing it 4ish each morning, he wakes every now and then a couple of hours after going down but usually finds his dummy and puts it in and goes back to sleep. The early morning he cries and usually won't settle without us, we try and comfort him and he usualy falls back to sleep after a while. However one night he wouldn't without milk. His day time naps vary day to day- I usually plan 2 or 3 depending on how the night has gone and how long he sleeps for in his morning nap. However when he was sleeping through the changeable day naps had no bearing - he just slept through. He's on 3 meals a day, always been really bad with milk but we still offer it and he usually takes a full bottle before bed.

I guess what I'm asking is, does this sound more like a phase, do you think it's hunger/growth spurt and should offer milk (don't want to get into a habit as he's been weaned for a while from night feeds) if he's being settled back to sleep for another hour or so, surely this indicates his night sleep isn't done at 5am. I just want to make sure I'm not doing anything glaringly obvious wrong! I don't want to seem like im complaining but I think I'd gotten used to 6am, then it changed to 5am but now seems to be anywhere between 4-5 and just seems to be getting worse, so wanted advice.

Thank you :)

Sounds like he just really wants the milk? Could definitely be a growth spurt and milk is main source of nutrition before 1.

Early morning wakes are always much harder to get baby back to sleep. Given the fact baby has just had loads of sleep (8h or whatever), there is less biological pressure of the body to go back to sleep (compared to a wake up at 11pm after only a few hours sleep, for example).

So normal to need to give extra help at this wake up. The way to tackle it is to either (a) do things to avoid baby waking up at this time. Or (b) utilise extra help to get baby back to sleep as quickly as possible.

To avoid the wake up happening, I'd try a wake>nappy change>feed>resettle when you go to bed, say 11pm. While I wouldn't normally recommend nappy chsnfescat night, the purpose here is to wake baby up properly. It means that come early morning baby is a little more comfortable in the nappy, and a little less hungry.

It also acts to 'reset' the nights sleep. That's why It a a proper wake up, rather than a dreamfeed keeping baby dozing. It can trick the body into thinking the night starts at 11pm ish.

Other factors that help avoid early wake ups:

• blackouts
• white noise
• not too hot/cold

The other way of dealingvis to just deal with the wake up as quickly and effectively as possible to get baby back to sleep. So respond to the grumbles as fast as you can, to avoid baby waking fully. Really quick to dummy insert and shush. If that isn't effective within a few mind, I'd go straight for a feed in order to get baby back to sleep as effectively as possible.

The key really is just treating it as a night wake, not a morning wake up.