Awake at 5.30 am

[Kaziah]

I am new to Mumsnet and my daughter who has just reached 6 months has been awaking between 5.00 and 5.30am every morning. She sleeps in a cot in our room and we hae blackout lining on the blinds. She will suck her fingers and play for a while, before becoming grizzly, and then will want to be fed. She is not very hungry and I normally breastfeed her for 10-15 minutes. She will then play for 10 minutes or so and go back to sleep (sometimes in our bed)until 7.30am.

I would love for her to sleep until 7am, as she is not interested in breakfast and has a a very small feed at 7.45am. I have tried giving her bolied water, but then she cries and is more difficult to settle. Any ideas on this would be great.

popsqueak - we've had exactly the same thing with one year old ds, also lively and busy child. we endured 5am starts for 6 montns and decided eventually we had to take action. tried almost everything gentle and kind and nothing worked. in the end we decided to leave him. first day screamed and hollered, second day grizzly and annoyed, third day whimpered and back to sleep til 7.15, fourth day same thing (me and DP went for a jog and then to pub with new found energy!). it doesnt work everyday but more than 50% of the time which is life-changing.

Kaziah, what you'll probably find is that once your dd is crawling and using up more energy, she'll start to sleep longer in the mornings. When my ds was about 8 or 9 months, he was crawling everywhere and began to sleep 11-12 hours at night instead of 10. By the time he was walking at 13 months, he was sleeping 12 hours every night plus a couple of hours through the day, because he was using a lot more energy. He's 2 now and still sleeps really well, so hopefully you'll find that it will get a bit easier as she gets older.

Liamsmum, I am also hoping that dd will probably need more sleep as she becomes more active and crawling. sometimes, on days when she is more energetic in the mornings, she will have a longer sleep in the afternoons. She normally does not sleep longer than 50-60 minutes in the afternoon, even when she has had a very short nap in the morning. Maybe in a few months, all her extra exploring will burn off some extra energy and tire her out a bit, and sleeping longer!