The early mornings - when did it end for you?

[houseargh]

DD (19m) is a reasonable sleeper - gets herself to sleep quickly and generally sleeps 'through' but my god, the mornings. A run of 5.30s is a luxury, right now she's in a phase of waking up at 4 something. Today was 4.20. So I have to keep her entertained for well over 3 hrs until my DP's once weekly proper lie-in is over, and at that point I'll probably have to go back to bed myself for a while, just to get through the day. Tomorrow we'll do the same in reverse. It's grim, and definitely contributing to my desire to stop at one (though not the only reason).

I need some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, so if yours was a chronic early riser when did it stop being a problem for you, and how (ie. did they finally start waking up later / get old enough for the gro-clock to work / get old enough to sort themselves out in the mornings)?

Give a shattered mother some reassurance that at some point before all my hair has gone grey I might be able to go to bed at 10pm confident of getting the 8 hrs of sleep I so desperately need!

Thanks all. I'm definitely past the stage of thinking we can fix this and already doing most of what's on here - just nice to hear that we're not alone and that some at least have seen gradual improvement!

Moving into a place where she can have her own room (and then at least attempting the gro-clock) is one milestone I'm hoping might help a bit. And I can well imagine dropping the nap might help too but really don't think she's ready yet (she naps approximately 12.30 - 2.30, sometimes a bit later on weekends. Schedule dictated by nursery as she's in full time).

It does go through phases of better and worse - I'm really hoping we're back to 5.30 wake-ups soon, and that will feel like a lie-in after the last couple of weeks!

DS was like this (now 18) things that helped were ;

1. Stopping putting him to bed in the middle of the day, instead just a 45 mins "buggy nap". I did this at around 18m as we went into his 2nd winter as the early mornings in the dark are brutal
2. Once he was going to school/ nursery regularly (so 3ish!)

To be honest he still a relatively early bird for a teenager, usually up by 9 at the weekend and asleep by 11/12 at night.

Eldest did this when she started sleeping through at around 12mo. It stopped when she stopped napping at 18-20mo. We introduced a Gro Clock then for consistency, and she took to it straight away.

Shes 3.5 now, still a lark and loves an early bedtime, but she’s fully able to entertain herself in her room until the ‘sun’ comes ups.

Before 530 is not waking up for the morning. Ut was hard but we never treated that as a wake up time. Also, at worst, we tried that thing where you wake the child a bit earlier than they would wake naturally- not fully, but enough for them to re-enter a sleep cycle. So you have to set your alarm for say 4 am, wake child lightly then settle.them back to sleep.

It did work for us I as much as we went back to a post 6am wake up.

We never did treat early wake up times as time to get up for the day, but it wasn’t some quick fix, if they don’t go back to sleep then you aren’t sleeping either, just horizontal for a bit longer (which was the best I could do so I took it). I had a very wakeful firstborn so I was expert at getting them back to sleep in the night and you know the difference when they finally just won’t go back to sleep again even when you’re doing exactly the same as you did for all the nighttime wakings. It took months/years for the proper waking time to get gradually later.

A sleep clock made all the difference for us, though tbf he was never that early of a riser, but I have the clock set to 8:30 (during the week I get him up at 7 for nursery so its only 8:30 for weekends) and while he might wake up before that (weirdly he adjusted to the clock and started sleeping later) he will just play quietly until the 'lamb wakes up' and then call for us. He's 4 now and I got the clock about a year ago. I don't think he would have understood the concept earlier but other children might.

He's terrible for waking up through the night though so don't be too jealous of the weekend lies we get!