Early waking at 4am for 9 month old

[Natkyle123]

Hi can anyone help my son has never been a good sleeper he use to wake every 40 mins through the night until 7 months when I did sleep training and now he will wake here and there which is way better than before, the problem is he wakes at 4 - 4.30 for the morning and won’t go back to sleep. He goes to bed at 6.30 and has 2 naps in the day one at 8ish for 45 mins then one at 12-12.30 for 1 1/2 hrs to 2 hrs. He settles himself to sleep for naps and bedtime (has a dummy but can find it now). Does anybody have any advice? I can handle 5.30 but 4 is not reasonable. Thanks

My son was exavtly the same, no amount of food or exercise or backout blinds etc for the next couple of years changed this. 4 to 4.30am every day. All I can advise is maybe a later will help yours.

Push the morningnap later. 8am is too early.- try 10 mins per day

A few questions :

Do you use a barrier cream on him for his last nappy? He could be waking up fully because of wetness in his nappy.

Do you offer a feed at 4?

Have you tried bringing him into your bed at 4? This works for lots of mums I know (and myself).

Tbh though, the sleep itself seems fine. He's sleeping for about 10.5 hours at night and they should have 11-12, with about 3 hours of naps in the day so he's pretty much where he should be. You'd need to move bedtime back, which would be tricky as it's now so ingrained, but if you Google 'making bedtime later baby' I'm sure you'll find some advice on there.

Little ones sleep guide has a troubleshooter that tells you how to deal with this, but you do have to pay for it. Give it a google if you're interested.

The program I follow says keep the morning nap very short by this age - 10-20 mins max and not until 9.40 or so. Apparently a morning nap that is too long will be giving your little one the signal that he can catch up on sleep later, which is why he is waking early.

For 9/10 months onwards they recommend nap at 9.30-10 for 10-20 mins, then 2 hours from 12:30-2.30 and a slightly later bedtime of 6.45, aiming for 7pm by 10 months.

Sounds like small tweaks to your routine could do the trick!!

Thanks I’ll give that a go and see how he gets on. X