Baby wakes early, doesn't cry but...

[Skyla01]

My LO is four months old. Bedtime is approx 730pm. We sometimes feed or rock to sleep but she can also self settle. She is EBF and wakes twice a night for feeds. Big feed then straight back to sleep.

Last week or two she has started waking early- anytime from 330am onwards. She doesn't cry, but lies in her moses chatting away (loudly, wakes us up) and kicks her legs about. Seems quite happy. I tend to give her a feed, which makes her drowsy and she falls asleep again. I have seen her go back to sleep herself too. The problem is I am tired from her waking me, and she must be tired from being awake a lot!

E.g. This morning I heard her at 4am, 5am, then 6am we got up. Not sure if she slept much from 4! I tried feeding her (3rd night feed, other feeds 12 and 3) around 5am. She fed but wasn't very hungry, became drowsy but woke up in basket. After getting up at 6am she was crying and tired at 0650 and is now having first nap of the day already! We have fairly good blackout curtains so whilst some light comes in not loads. Any advice on how I can get her to sleep longer through the early hours- I think she needs it!

There is a developmental leap at 4 months, so you might find that once she's through that this pattern changes again and improves. Meanwhile get her as much natural daylight (and fresh air) in the day time as you can, go for walks, play in the garden etc) as that will help her body with moving towards a diurnal pattern.
If you haven't already look up developmental leaps and how they affect sleep.

At this age while still being milk-fed she needs to be awake for a longer time at the "dream feed" or a later bedtime. So either allow a long late afternoon nap getting her up 6-9/10 or wake her at 10:30/11 for as close to an hour as you can manage if you want her to sleep past 5:30/6 in the morning.

Have you got a black out blind or curtains?

Does she sleep too much in the day?

@traumatisednoodle Unfortunately she mostly cat naps at the moment. I try and get five naps a day as it's unusual for her to nap longer than 40min so a long afternoon nap isn't possible. I wouldn't mind her getting up at 6am if she was well rested and stayed awake until say 8am. But some mornings (like today) she was yawning almost as soon as we were up.

@RealisticSketch quite possible. If that's the case hope it passes soon!

@WeAreTheHeroes of sorts. Going to get new blinds fitted soon so hopefully room will be properly dark. (Blackout curtains are never as good as promised I find!)

@Passthecake30 I wish! She catnaps so over four or five naps I try and get 2.5 to 3 hours. Occasionally manage a bit more if she sneaks in a longer nap.

Early morning wakes need lots of additional help to get her back to sleep, because the body's natural pressure to sleep is lowest then.

So if you feed to sleep then attempting to not feed to sleep in early morning is fruitless - baby needs tons of extra help to get to sleep, not less. It's irrelevent that baby isn't hungry, the nighttime feeds are largely comfort anyway and certainly this early morning "feed" will be.

If you sometimes rock her to sleep, she'll need that too in the mornings. Many families offer the extra comfort needed by bringing baby into bed with you and cosleeping from this point. It's all about offering more help than normal to go back to sleep.

NB - It isn't necessary to have to feed/rock to sleep for everyone during early morning wakes. It's just that these are the settling methods you use, so more of them are needed early mornings because of the low pressure to sleep. Other families might look to use more independent methods for baby to go to sleep - like dummy sucking and patting to sleep in the cot. What i'm saying is that because you go for parent-dependant settling methods, it's more of those you need when the pressure to sleep is lower.

I wouldn’t get black out blinds. You’ll spend the next few years trying to blackout any room she sleeps in which will be a PITA.

If she’s chipper and not crying I’d ignore her as best you can

@FATEdestiny I do try a feed, sometimes works sometimes doesn't. Will keep trying though. Yesterday she fed back to sleep from 545 until 7am! Sods law she does that when DP takes a turn to get up early with her.

@LittleBearPad her room actually already has a proper blackout blind which will be useful for when she's older and moves in there.

Thanks for comments everyone. Will see what happens and hope it doesn't get worse. Agree most mornings I can leave her to it but today was worse than usual and she's been so tired & grizzly as a result.

[quote Skyla01]@FATEdestiny I do try a feed, sometimes works sometimes doesn't. Will keep trying though. Yesterday she fed back to sleep from 545 until 7am! Sods law she does that when DP takes a turn to get up early with her.

@LittleBearPad her room actually already has a proper blackout blind which will be useful for when she's older and moves in there.

Thanks for comments everyone. Will see what happens and hope it doesn't get worse. Agree most mornings I can leave her to it but today was worse than usual and she's been so tired & grizzly as a result.[/quote]
My point was more related to grandparent house stays, hotel or holiday stays etc than your own house. That you can control, the others less so.

Wide awake at 4am this morning. I fell back asleep for a bit then fed her at 445. Had to keep my hand on her chest for a while but think she went back to sleep for a bit. Up for the day at 550. Just having first nap now so bit better than yesterday.
@FATEdestiny should I try and get her back to sleep as soon as I hear her? Sometimes I leave her for a bit to see if she settles herself.

should I try and get her back to sleep as soon as I hear her? Sometimes I leave her for a bit to see if she settles herself.

She is very, very unlikely to self settle in the early mornings - this is the time when loads of extra help his needed.

The longer she is awake, the more wide awake she will be so the harder to resettle. Respond to her as soon as humanly possible if your hope is to resettle back to sleep.

@FATEdestiny ok thanks, will do!

Hi again just wonder if anyone has further advice for me. Some days she's been up at 5am, other days got her back to sleep so ok. But this morning she was awake from 4am, chatting and playing. Tried to feed back to sleep but didn't work. She got grizzly at 6am so we both got up then.

But what do I do with a four month old that's already been awake for two hours?! I let her nap again at 630am because she was clearly tired. Slept for 40min. Within an hour of waking she was back asleep for a second longer nap- it's not even 10am yet! I don't want to reinforce early waking but at four months is it too young to force her to stay awake longer? She gets very grizzly when tired.

Also she did go to bed a bit earlier than usual last night (asleep just before 7pm) so maybe should try a later bedtime? But to get that to happen need to try and get an early evening nap in... At this rate she'll need at least six naps a day

I think you have some unrealistic expectations of what life is like with a baby. Under 6 month olds don't tend to have a "bedtime", until you go up to bed and take baby with you.

Then your day is repeating cycles of:

• Wake
• Feed
• Nappy and floor play until crying
• Settling to sleep
• Sleep

That whole cycle is probably around 2h. Say it might be 40 mins nap and 1h20 awake window. So you get little repeating cycles in your day from the moment you wake right through until you go to bed, say 10 or 11pm.

The only deviation in that day is that whenever an awake window falls in the region on 6pm-8pm, you call that "bedtime" - so do bath, change into night clothes etc. But baby goes "to bed" still downstairs wherever he usually naps (I used a bouncy chair). Then any wake ups between then and you taking baby up with you, you keep awake time as minimal as possible so it becomes wake>feed>back to sleep.

From whenever baby wakes, say 5am or whatever, this carries on. So if you get a 5am wake, baby will indeed be wanting a nap at about 6.30am. Then if waking at 7am, next nap likely somewhere around 8.30am and so on.

Naps stretch as baby gets older, I think you are expecting too much just yet.

If you want to be working on something - work on getting a dummy accepted so baby can consistantly settle to sleep independantly. It will make a massive difference.

There's a regression around 4 months. I remember DD waking every hour at 4 months old, it was exhausting but after a cuddle she'd go back to sleep. Do whatever you need to do at this stage and get back in to a routine when she's sleeping better again, if she wants to go back down after a couple of hours, then sleep when she goes to sleep. There'd be some days we'd be up at 4am pushing the pram around the living room trying to get her to sleep😬 it lasted a few weeks and then she slept much better

"right through until you go to bed" so about 20:30 then I don't last much longer than LO does!

Thanks, I just wanted to check whether letting her sleep whenever she needs to is ok. I'd heard of keeping older babies awake to help with early waking, but I thought that doesn't sound like a good idea for a four month old. She was a bit better last night as I got her back to sleep at 4am, but already napping again now.

@CustardGoodJamGoodMeatGood hopefully just a short phase for us too. Unfortunately her naps are either on me or in pram. Otherwise I'd love to sneak in my own naps!

We had 5.30/6 mornings for a long time. I dont think it's that uncommon. We now have 6.30 starts for school now they're older anyway...

I went to sleep pretty much when baby did to ensure I got some sleep.

@GiantToadstool I need quite a lot of sleep to function so early nights here too. I would be ok with a 530am wake up; not ideal but I'd take it if she didn't wake up at 4am too... I'm definitely used to early mornings now! At least it's summer so nice light mornings.

Ah yes we had multiple night wakings for quite a while ..... and then an early start!

It really isn't uncommon but I think one of the hardest things to deal with as a parent. Especially if friends have "good sleepers!"