18m waking at 5:20 no matter what

[HowIsThisOk]

It doesn't matter if bedtime is 7, 7:30, 8:30 (its normally 7:30 but we have been trying later bedtimes to extend sleep). It doesn't matter how much she sleeps during the day. It doesn't matter when her dinner is. We have tried adjusting everything. 5:18am on the dot every morning she wakes screaming for us, waking the whole house (including her 3 year old sister). By 8am she is knackered again. I think she is tired getting up. We have tried going in to her and not picking her up. We have tried letting her cry it out. It all ends in blood curdling screams that sound like she is bring murdered. The poor neighbours. It's been like this for months, maybe 5.

Someone please tell me they had the same problem and fixed it.

OP you can start shifting the one nap later so that its more like 12/a bit after. That means you go out in the morning and then again after nap...or nap in the pram/car around that time depending on your child! Its hard with a 3 year old but they got their sleep needs met when they were younger and the only child, so its only fair the second baby gets theirs too. They can have lunch and a tv/read/play if you nap at home.

the more i think about it the more you need to drop to one nap. You will find sleep evens out after a few weeks. Babies do wake easily at that time, there is a reason but I can't recall it! We find the heating coming on does sometimes cause a wake up, but we had 5am wake ups for months and now don't.

I’m afraid both of mine 26 months and 13 months both wake at 5am and always have. We had a horrible phase of 4am and that had me dreaming of 5 again. I think some just wake early I’ve never found a fix

Oh this sounds hard OP
If it's exactly same time and she's waking up screaming it does sound like something is disturbing her. You're maybe not aware of it as it's only something can be heard from her room? The white noise is a good suggestion.
And like other have said, mine were both down to 1 nap by 18 months.

You're going to need to take this head on for couple weeks and try and solve it. Get up early and be in her room from 5am to listen for noise that could wake her.
Would she settle again if you take her in bed with you before she's properly awake and screaming?

11am sleep for 2 hours and then push it towards 12.

Good luck

Once she is awake she doesn't settle anywhere except downstairs with one of us. We have tried taking her into our bed.

I also have the issue that I work. I am a teacher part time, 3 days a week, so I can only control 2 days a week of nap times. I will see if the childminder will put her down for a nap at 11 but I think 11:30 is their lunch time and she is 1 of 5 kids there. Its so messy. Logically one nap at 11ish makes the most sense but logistically it's a tough one for us. I was hoping a change to morning or evening would fix it.

Thank you all for your advice. Will try one nap a day this week as I am on easter holidays.

Surely the childminder can give her lunch reheated when she wakes or a bit early ? As soon as the back of this is broken and she is sleeping later in the morning she can have her lunch at 11:30 and go down at 12.

Drop to one nap, get the childminder to have her nap at 12 and you do it at 11 and then over the course of a few weeks move your nap to 12 too. Move bedtime earlier to adjust to this and hopefully it will help! We're in a routine of splitting the day in half so will go out in the morning, back for lunch and nap, and then out again in the afternoon (on just hang around at home if we feel like it) so you can still get out and about with a middle of the day nap.

The morning nap is compensating for the early waking and reinforcing the habit.
You need to transition to one nap, don’t try and do it all in one go or you’ll get a horrendously overtired toddler who won’t sleep at all.
Try this for a week
Morning nap 9.15-10
Afternoon nap 1.30-3
Then
Morning nap 9.30-10
Afternoon nap 1.15-2.45
Then
Morning nap 9.45-10
Afternoon nap 1-2.30
Then drop the morning nap all together and do the lunchtime nap 12.30-2.30. You might need to the lunchtime nap very early for a while eg 11.45-2. Play around with things.
Waking before 2.30pm = bedtime 6.30pm.

Ours did this for a year. Nothing helped. I just went to bed earlier.

We had one of those early risers. Just took it in turns to take her downstairs so the oh could sleep. Dd was always good at going to bed though and kept up her afternoon naps right up to starting school.
I just figured at least we had our evenings free and 2 hours free in afternoon to get stuff done! It gets easier, OP, dd is 14 now and sleeps till 9am if we let her!

My eldest will soon turn 15 and can easily sleep til midday if left!! It goes the other way as they grow up. Don't worry.

@HowIsThisOk I haven't read all the replies, but seen she has 2 naps. The first one is too long, so she's shattered by bed time (even though she has a 2nd one).

Aim for 1 long nap after lunch a day, which will be hard so try and get there this way:

Her first nap should be 30 min absolute max (starting 9-9:30). Try and do it on the go, so waking her in the cot is less traumatising for her.

Then a 2nd nap should be just over an hour from 1:30ish.

As time goes on, she either will fight the morning nap or it will get later and later, and then you want to turn the whole thing into a long one after lunch.

Hang in there x

Just an update.

We have moved to one nap around 12:30pm for about 1.5 hours. We also dropped the morning bottle thinking that was what she wanted when she woke.

She is now waking at 4:45am every morning.

Kids make no sense.

If it's any consolation it'll get better and soon she'll be able to understand the concept of a Gro clock and you can tweak her morning get ups by 5 mins a day until it's a more sociable time.

My d gets up at 4 :(

Thank you!

I am not really worried about it lasting forever. She is my second kid so I know everything does change and come to an end eventually. I just wish it would change tomorrow 😆

Exact same situation. Second child, 20m old, waking anything from 4am -5:30am. Cannot for the life of me find a solution. It's killer but hoping it's a phase that passes soon. It's been about 3 months....