Early riser thread/moan

[Etherealhedgehog]

DD is 15 months old and fabulous but has either had multiple night wakings (til we sleep trained at 7.5 months) or got up brutally early, every day since she was born. I am So Over It. By early I mean - often 4.30. Sometimes 5. For ages it was 4.45 every day. We're currently going through a phase where she will very occasionally do 5.30/6 and every time the latter happens it truly feels like the best day of my life when I wake up and see the time. But then it will be back to 4.30 again. I can't help but hope we're turning a corner every time a 6 o clock happens and the disappointment is making me so grumpy. I'd rather she just stuck to one time. Side note - I can't believe there are threads on here that consider 5.30 to be early. Little do they know.

And yes, I know some babies just do this/it's normal etc. But the thing is, when she wakes up this early it's always grumpy/crying because she's clearly still tired. On the days when she wakes up at six we hear her babbling merrily from her cot and it's like she's a different baby. So 4.30/5 is clearly not her optimal time to wake up. We've just transitioned down to one nap (two was no longer happening) and you can imagine how horrendous it is to try to get her through to 12.30 naptime when she's been up since 4.30...

In terms of schedule, she goes to bed at 7pm (we tried 8pm for over a month with not much difference so now we're back to trying earlier) and naptime is at 12.30. Recently she naps for usually 2-2.5 hrs. She sometimes wakes once in the night and gets a bottle, which often leads to a later waking but not always (up at 12.30 and 4.30 today for example ).

Was this you? If so, what did you try? (And please don't suggest cosleeping, that won't result in us all getting more sleep). Or did it just improve naturally at some point, if so at what age? Please give a very tired and grumpy person some hope!

This is currently me too. My 22 month old went through a phase of waking at 4:30 sorted it’s self out for about 6 weeks and now we’re back to it. It’s utterly exhausting and today we are up at 3:40 for the day.

I have a 9 month old too who is up during the night and I didn’t know it was possible to be this tired.

Yes, this was DS1. He wasn't a great sleeper at all (understatement) and I dud end up collecting from about 7 weeks. On MN I was often told to treat it as a night waking and to get him back to sleep, it's not time to get up etc, but really?? Babies don't get that.

His sleep in general improved when I stopped feeding him to sleep, sbd then did gradual withdrawal at bedtimes, around 13 months. But by 15 months he was sleeping through but up at 4.30/5am. I did bring him into bed and often if I bf him he'd go back to sleep. No help to you though, unless you try a bottle at that time. I didn't ever go downstairs til a reasonable hour - 6am.

Nice to feel less alone! Up at 4.15 today, after a 3.30 yesterday, which feels all the worse because she randomly did two 6ams earlier in the week. @Yelsiap I can't imagine how you do this with two. I honestly feel like this is making me feel worse than when she was up 5x in a night. I'm sure physically that's not true but at least then we knew what the cause was (feeding to sleep) and how we were going to fix it ( @ImFree2doasiwant we also did gradual retreat - worked like a dream). With this it feels like the advice is just to fiddle around with the schedule in various contradictory ways, oh and it won't take effect for weeks so no way to know if what you're doing is working, and some babies are like this anyway!? It's so demoralising. Though actually the thing I find most frustrating atm is not the lack of sleep (I'm lucky at least that we both currently work from home and have time to split lie-ins 50:50) but the fact that her schedule is so out of whack with the world - we've learnt the hard way that a two nap day is no longer possible so we have to keep her up til lunchtime but by about 8.30am she's getting grumpy and wants to go back to bed. We end up avoiding activities because we know if she spends more than five mins in the pram after about 10am she'll fall asleep and then won't take a decent nap. It feels so unbelievably restricting. She also spends waaaaaay more time than I would like watching TV because we are catatonic with exhaustion for so much of her awake time, and it doesn't even get light enough to go out until she's been up for hours. We do try a bottle when she wakes to get her back down but it's totally hit and miss - some days she'll go back to sleep at 4.30 and sleep til 6 (bliss!), yesterday we gave her a bottle at 3.30 and she wouldn't go back down (wtf!?). Even when she was tiny and feeding to sleep this didn't really work after about 4.30am, so she's clearly got particularly teeny sleep drive in the wee hours. Anyway, good luck - I hope they all snap out of it soon. You definitely have my sympathy!

This was my son, now 5 yrs later still my son. Now we can get him to entertain himself if he wakes up at 4/5 am he looks through a book and falls asleep to about 6.30.

We tried everything but we have accepted he's an early riser/bedder like me.

Mine is about a month younger and we've been going through this too. I contacted a sleep consultant as I was so fed up, and she told me it can be linked to overtiredness. Our DD started nursery recently and hasn't been sleeping well there so that might be why, but she does it on days where she's not at nursery and sleeps better too. I have to believe it's a phase and not just how she is! You have my sympathy!

This was my son too. He's 3.5 now and still wakes at 5am (an improvement from 4.30am). After trying everything including paying a sleep consultant, I've come to terms with the fact that he, like some children, is just built that way. Doesn't make it any easier though I know and looking at @bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyza post it looks like it will probably be this way for a while longer for us.

I was about to write a thread 🥲

Meeee, I’m here with you, damn it’s hard.
I have a 14 week old and an 18.5m old and the 14 week old wakes every 2 hours through the night and the 18.5m old does 7pm-6am solid then is absolutely busting with energy. Sooo on broken sleep I’m meant to or DP, we alternate get up at 6am and do loads of cool stuff with him. Today he got the click together circuit board and components I bought him for Christmas out.. at 6:10am he climbed the dining table and stood there with photo resistor in hand saying ‘es go’ let’s go 😩

No thanks. In the night garden is in every morning now, are we bad?😬 I’ve just had a double espresso and starting to feel less dead

You can try going out early in the morning, once it is light, or maybe have daylight bulbs to help cue her body that it is daytime and making the early morning more boring, so being in the room with her but not really interacting with her. Also going to bed early yourself so you are less tired to manage her. It will be easier for you to shift your body clock later when she does sleep in a bit. I would try persisting with the 8pm bed times, making sure you shift all the times forward an hour, so breakfast an hour later, lunch later etc. Much as you would when counteracting jet lag. You could do it in 10 min sections over a week or two - so first day have breakfast at 8.10 rather than 8, lunch at 12.10 rather than 12, nap at 12.40 rather than 12.30.

Although I totally get why you use the TV a lot, so did I at times, trying to get outside in a routine especially when decent light helps. This is why it is really important for you to synch more initially with early nights for you so you have the energy to then bring them with you in the shift in timing.

We had one dc particularly who needed very little sleep. Didn't sleep in the day after the first month. Slept badly in the night. I would say that 3-4 was the turning point for night times when they were out regularly every day for preschool. They still don't sleep loads but being up at 5.30- 6 means they can revise in their room for A levels while their friends are still snoozing.

It honestly does get better.

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one. We’ve been out walking the dog at 7am very frequently at the moment because by then we’ve been up for hours. I know what you mean by the out of whack schedule lunch at 10am is a thing here. They do both have colds at the moment which I hope is a contributing factor. Anything after 5 is fine, 6 would be amazing. But it’s the 4:30 or like today 3:40 which feel awful.

My son was doing 4.30 regularly. One morning we were so I'll we couldn't physically get up with him at that time and inadvertently ended up sleep training him. He ended up going back to sleep and has slept to 5.30 since then. 4.30 is still night time and so grim to get up at this time.

Too much of a nap on the day, start cutting it down slowly, and slowly creep to the 8pm bed time again too.
Is she at nursery ? This usually tires them out.
Remember that everything is a phase, in 12 years you’ll be waking up early due to your age, and waiting for her to get up !

It’s so tricky with shortening the nap though isn’t it? Because she’s been up so early she really needs to catch up so she isn’t over tired? Sleep who knew it was such a confusing and sensitive thing!!

@steelseries

This was my son too. He's 3.5 now and still wakes at 5am (an improvement from 4.30am). After trying everything including paying a sleep consultant, I've come to terms with the fact that he, like some children, is just built that way. Doesn't make it any easier though I know and looking at *@bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyza* post it looks like it will probably be this way for a while longer for us.

I was told it was a phase too but nope he likes to do things ( softplay, museums etc) in the morning when it's quieter. I am a early Walker too so it works for us. Occasionally we have had a 7.45 wake up but that's like having a blue moon.

I'm naturally an earlier riser and often set off for a run at 5am and my lunch is 10.30/11. I've always been this way and was always the first one up in my childhood home.

I noticed you said nap time is at 12.30 and you try and keep them awake until then. I'd let the LO sleep when they're ready instead of at set times. When I'm getting ready for a nap and it isn't possible at the time I'm often unable to sleep if I can nap later - babies can be the same.

I agree with others about getting them out and trying to use up as much energy as possible. Is your LO walking? Long walks help to put my LO to sleep.

Thanks all, so good to know we're not alone (particularly at times that begin with 3 ). She is at nursery full-time so in theory should be worn out by that, though of course not the last couple of weeks, which probably isn't helping ... The 12.30 naptime is because that's when they nap at nursery, and as she's there 5 days a week we figure we might as well stick with that. We have tried letting her go to sleep in the morning when she's tired (on non-nursery days) but that usually results in no afternoon nap and the world's worst afternoon/evening. I think a big part of the problem is the fact that we're in a one bed flat, which means there's no keeping her in the bedroom until 6 (unless we want neither of us to get a lie-in) and I'm quite paranoid about noise so don't leave her to moan for ages. Househunting atm so fingers crossed we have more space and fewer neighbors soon! I think we are going to go back to the 8pm bedtimes, as this seems if anything worse. And that's interesting @GoodnightGrandma about shortening the nap - I read that on another thread though haven't had the heart to try it yet. By naptime we all need a break so it really seems counterintuitive. But she never naps longer than 2 hrs at nursery and often less so I think I'll let that happen naturally when she goes back this week and see what happens. We do get her outside usually twice every day, though not as early as we'd like - another annoying side effect of this is that on the days when she's up really crazy early, we both take lie-ins (if work/schedule permits) and then end up being ready to leave the house much later than if she just woke up at 6, but if we don't then one of us is knackered through the day. I guess a lot of it is expectations management, though from the fact that she's often so miserable when she wakes I'm going to very much hope this is a phase/schedule thing and she won't still be like this when she's five (eek!)