04:30 up for the day!

[rosekirk]

Any suggestions please?!
My 11 month old DS has been a terrible sleeper but we've finally turned the corner about 4 weeks ago where he now goes to bed no trouble about 7pm and sleeps through 🎉 until exactly 04:30 when his eyes ping open and that's him up for the day! For about 3 weeks now I have been going back into his room and constantly lying him back down, shushing him etc sitting by the cot but he just will not go back to sleep! I give up about 05:00/05:15 and just get up with him 😕
He's then a grumpy bugger by the school run and totally exhausted.
1st nap 09:15-10:30
2nd nap 1:30-3pm (I wake him for school run)
Bed 7pm.
What's going wrong?! Help! I'm happy he's sleeping through but 04:30 is just too early to be up everyday and he's waking my other 2 children too 😣

It might be too bright or too hot in the room as that's around sunrise.

I would negotiate bedtime slowly. In the meantime, your best option is to try and get to bed yourself as early as possible to make sure you are getting enough sleep.

Wish I had some advice for you Op but my 19mo still does this and I now have a baby that keeps me up all night feeding too! We tried everything and the only thing that has helped (she now sleeps
Till 5/5.30 rather than 4) was putting her in a thicker sleeping bag and more layers (extra vest) - more clothes than I thought she needed. But I think the temp cooling down was waking her up at 4 ish x

Forgot to say that we have blackout blinds etc - Definitely it to do with light. She does it it winter too!

Not to be the voice of pessimism, but my 2 year old still wakes at 4.30. Always has. I’m currently functioning on between 4 and 6 hours sleep a night. Blackout blinds and blackout curtains have failed to make a jot of difference. Good luck

Also (if you’re not already) be sure to offer supper and make sure he has a full tummy before bed

Yes I was just coming on to say more or less what @MotherTime3 said. My now 9mo started waking for the day at 3:30am when she was 3mo (unless being held in arms). It gradually improved to 4:30am by 5mo and 5/5:30am by 8mo. We've had a few 6am wake ups since, but only 2 or 3. I have posted on here many times about it and no one has been able to come up with any solutions, so I'm following keenly.

For us a change of bedtime doesn't make any difference. I think it's routine and over tiredness. She doesn't get the day time sleep she needs but like you I'm restricted by the school run (she also refuses to nap outside the house despite me regularly trying). I also have a toddler who always seems to know when she's just fallen asleep and make huge amounts of noise, waking baby. Baby then thinks she's had a nap and won't go back to sleep and then toddler looses patience.

However mine has been doing this for a long time and this is new for you after previously established good sleeping, soooooooo I sort of want to say that this is probably teething/developmental leap/something else and that you'll come out the other side soon....??

Ooh I've just realised that today is the last day of term. Maybe time to try out new day time sleep routine?

There's nothing wrong. My 2 kids and most of my friends babies would get up around 5am at this age. I don't remember them sleeping past 5am until the last 2 or 3 years (they're 8 and 6 now) 5am wake ups turned to 7am and now I have to drag them out of bed for school. I know its tiring and frustrating but it's just normal for some babies.

I honestly don't think theres anything you can do. Just remember it won't last forever and one day you shall sleep again. That's what I tell myself anyway. My DS is the same age and sleeps 9-6 waking up twice. Won't have two naps anymore even though he is exhausted. One day....one day.....

One theory is that the first nap is too early and too long and so this is used as a compensation for night time sleep to make up the 24-hr total (which is right for his age).

So what you are supposed to do is push the start of the morning nap back by 5 mins each day (keeping the end time the same) until it is a very short cat nap and then drop it all together.

You can also make sure the nursery is absolutely really pitch black with not a shred of light coming in.

Dd did this for 6 months. Sadly, absolutely nothing helped until she got old enough for me to go in and say it was still nighttime and she wasn’t getting up yet. Now she’ll happily sleep until 6:30/7 most mornings. No help at all I know!

Morning all thanks for the replies 😊 So I've got a blackout blind and his room is dark so I don't think it's that? He's only in a 1.5tog sleeping bag as it's been so hot but suppose it could be getting chillier at 04:30?
That's an interesting theory about pushing 1st nap back and shortening it? I might try that as now he schools have broke up I'm not restricted by school run times. I actually was going to do the opposite and put him back to bed at 08:30 thinking it was maybe over tiredness causing the early wakings??
Not sure which approach to take now tho?!!

Does he still need that second nap? What would happen if you dropped or reduced it?

Ive never tried? But he seems to manage to be awake for about 3 hours then after that he's a tired mess 🤷🏼‍♀️ Even the 4hours before bed the last hour is difficult and I have to carry him around.
He's back in bed now at 8:30 as he's been up since 04:30/5am and was basically lying on the carpet going to sleep 🙈😂

It's a difficult time of year to get the right clothes for bed. It's too hot when you fall asleep, then a little chilly, then it warms up significantly by the morning.

I'd try a midday-ish nap and putting to bed a little later, in increments.

But yeah, like a lot of PP, some babies do just wake up at the first hint of dawn.

God I feel for you. Really. My oldest is now 16 but was like this as a baby and I still remember how awful it was. We used to sleep in shifts, I'd get up at 4.30 until 6, then DH would get up for work, I'd go back to bed and when he left at 7.45 I'd get up again. Sheer, unrelenting HELL.

We tried everything with him - fewer naps. More naps. Shorter naps. Longer naps. Earlier bedtime. Later bedtime. Nothing worked.

However, it does gradually get better. He was an early riser right through his pre-school and primary school years, but 6.30 or 7am rather than 4.30am. And as they get older you can use things like growclocks and they can learn that until it says 7, they're not allowed to leave their room but can play quietly.

Now he's 16 and I have to chisel him out of bed in the morning.

The best piece of advice I can give is to ignore the smug mummies (of which there are plenty) giving you advice about their routines and how their little angel sleeps from 8pm to 8am and doesn't make a peep. It will just make you murderous and want to plot evil ways of killing them. And their little angel.

Some kids are just wired differently. Hope things get better for you soon.

My daughter was like this too. I manipulated every variable I could think of to no avail. She was just awake from stupid o'clock every day. It was exhausting and lasted for ages I'm afraid. But I too would suggest you ignore all the smug people who magically make their babies sleep 12 hours every night . My babies now only manage that as teenagers!!!

I'm not sure why I ever decided to have another after the 4.30am wakings but my second child was a DREAM. On the night I brought her home from the hospital she slept 11.30pm to 6am. When I saw the HV she advised waking her at 3 am for a feed. This was the same HV who'd seen me repeatedly over the first one's sleep issues, in tears and at the end of my fucking tether. Fuck that for a game of soldiers. The evenings glued to the sofa cluster feeding her from 7pm to 11.30pm were definitely worth it for 6 hours unbroken sleep!!

😂 thanks ladies, I think?! Honestly who has these magic sleeping babies! Even my older 2 are up at 6-6:30am. That's fine tho, 04:30 is on another level tho isn't it 😣

My sister has a baby that sleeps in until 9 or 10am and has a three hour nap in the afternoon. You just have to say the word nap to her and she toddles off to her cot.

I've never known my son to willingly go to bed in his life and he's eight.

I tried the shorten the morning nap theory. Didn't work for us at all. In fact it made things worse for several weeks as she refused naps and started night waking too. 😣

The one thing I have seen consistently from my 3 children is that sleep feeds sleep. I know that many people disagree but for us it's always worked. Even with my 3rd (my 9mo), if there are times I do manage to get more daytime sleep into her, she will categorically sleep better at night. I suspect she wants an 9am nap and 2pm nap, but school has always been in the way.

Well I hope you're right because his afternoon nap was 1-2:15pm so he was past it by 5:45 and went to bed at 6pm 😱 Hope I'm not up at 3:30am for the day 🙈😂

Oh there’s something particularly grim about being awake around 4 and 5am somehow. I’m defo not smug, disbelieving, but DD2 almost 10m has recently gone from waking all night, and early, to sleeping 11/12hrs and napping pretty well, through doing a gradual withdrawal method from a sleep consultant Lucy Wolfe. There’s another thread here about self settling and various success stories on it. In her book it’s all about the gaps between naps and bedtime being prescribed to prevent overtired, as well as baby learning to fall asleep themselves with you lying beside cot comforting and gradually moving away. She suggests timings for each age. Like pp has said, overtiredness seems to be a big deal and sleep breeds sleep. I can’t believe how much sleep DD now seems to need compared to what she took before when she was waking half the night. So yeah I’d go with your instinct to get him down earlier in the morn and not wait til he’s knackered.

We went through this. Dts are 7 now and still always up for the day at 530, the only saving grace is they can cope by themselves until a semi reasonable hour. Apparently I was exactly the same. Sorry!

I remember my daughter going through this phase. Like others, I found it was the timing/length of the nap. She would wake at 5am, be exhausted by 9 and need a nap. She was simply taking the rest of her nights sleep at a later time! I think in the end I shorted that nap to just enough time to keep her going until her later nap. It was hell and I remember bouncing her around to keep her awake! Ultimately it did work and she slept more at night...for a while until her routine changed yet again! She is 4 now and sleeps 7-6:30 most days. Sometimes wakes in the night.