Can I just leave him to scream, because I can’t take any more?

[feesh]

Early morning wakings have been killing us for 3 or 4 months now.

He’s 12 months old and goes to bed at 7pm ish. Our day starts at 6am.

But he always, always wakes up between 4am and 5.30am and it’s killing me. Because I have to get up at 6 anyway, the last thing I want to be doing at 4.30 is spending an hour trying to get him back to sleep again. It’s been going on for months and I’m exhausted. He’s not hungry (won’t breastfeed) - he’s just awake.

I’m on my own this week and tried switching him to one nap in the day instead of two. But it anything it’s made it worse - he woke up at 3.30am yesterday and it took me an hour to get him back off and then another hour of me lying there awake and then he woke up for the day anyway at 5.30.

Now he’s been awake since 4.30am today and I brought him in bed with me to avoid spending an hour stood over the cot, but he’s been a total nightmare thrashing around and chatting and neither of us have slept.

If he does it tomorrow I just want to leave him, because nothing I do will make him sleep, but he will scream and scream and scream and it will escalate.

His room is pitch black by the way. We live in the Middle East and the sun isn’t even near coming up at 5am.

I’m at the end of my rope.

We have the gro clock so set it to to a time he commonly wakes at and start the day, tell him oh look it's time to get up (sounds twee I know) then you edge that time forward and eventually he will learn to relax until the sun comes up on the clock

www.thesleeplady.co.uk/

My son has just gone through a hideous phase of night wakings/waking up early. It started around 12 months and coincided with him dropping to one nap, learning to walk, learning to talk and his first set of molars coming through. I believe the biggest factor was separation anxiety and the fact that he'd got used to us going in and settling him back to sleep.

If he woke up and we didn't go in he'd scream. If he heard us outside his room he would often stop crying then start again when he realised we weren't going in straight away. I almost went insane (I was/am pregnant too!) so I decided I had to have a plan and be consistent with it. What I did was:

• Put him to bed a little later - 30 minutes at first. For us, this worked, but I'm aware it can sometimes have the opposite effect.
• Leave him for 3 minutes initially. If the crying hadn't stopped I'd go in and lie him back down without saying anything.
• If after leaving the room he continued to cry I'd go back in after 5 minutes, change his nappy, offer some water, give ibuprofen/paracetamol if I thought he may have teething pain (without getting him out of his cot) and leave the room.
• After this if he continued to cry I'd ignore him.

Thankfully I never had to ignore him for long as he would always settle within 5 or 10 minutes and went back to sleeping through until 7am within a few nights. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or what but I was so happy - our frequent/early wakings had been going on for almost 7 months so I can sympathise.

My 11 month old is waking up early, about an hour before our day starts. I leave her to cry for about half an hour. Usually if she's slept well she just chats to her toys in the cot. It's hard work to leave her to cry but we're just getting used to having sleep again!

My DS sometimes wakes early. He's generally happy if given some toys and i put a story cd on for him. He usually grumbles a bit when i leave the room but he does settle and sometimes actually goes back to sleep.

I'd put him to bed tired but still awake, reduce the effort you put into helping him sleep so that he can self sooth.
Give him supper so he's not hungry
And yep, leave him to it

How much is he sleeping in the day?