Early waking

[SquigglePigs]

My 17 month old has started in the last week or so waking at 4.30am and not resettling. Until then she'd been waking about 6am, which is perfectly manageable. The 4.30 starts are really getting to us on top of everything else with lockdown.

Any ideas on how to get her to stay asleep longer?

We think part of the problem might be naps. She's still on two a day which I think is unusual at her age but with the early starts she's exhausted by 8am so won't keep going late enough for one nap. On the few days a few weeks ago when we did manage one nap I don't think she was sleeping long enough so was then overtired by bedtime.

Is there anything we can do with naps that might help?

Hey

We are having a similar issue with our 16 months old only he wakes up around 5ish. We’ve started putting him to bed at 6pm so he gets at least 11hrs sleep. I might not be the best person to answer this but it sounds like the two nap may be the issue...

Anyway, when your lo naps at 8am, how long does she nap for? Could you just keep this to a short 10 min nap to work on her getting a bigger nap at lunch time?

Does any light creep into the room? Could this be waking her? Could it be teething?

Hope you get some semblance of normality back. 4:30am starts during lockdown are a killer.

@DizzyR Sorry for not responding sooner and thank you for your reply.

Another 4.30 start this morning!

She's got blackout blinds and blackout curtains so I don't think we can do much else in terms of light - it does get the sun in the morning though.

She's definitely teething - having had a few weeks clear of anything she's clearly suffering at the mo. She's also going through a growth spurt I think - her face changes on a daily basis and she's eating for England!!

I think you're right about the daytime naps causing the problem. It's so hard when she's clearly so tired. Today she only had half an hour this morning, then 45 mins in the middle of the day. She was then so tired and grumpy she basically screamed at my DH for about an hour and a half til I gave up trying to work and placated her with milk. DH was a SAHD for 8 months so he's generally perfectly capable of dealing with her.

I think we're going to use the long weekend to try to break the nap schedule.

Thank you for responding - and hope you've had a better day or two with your little one.