What’s going wrong with our sleep schedule? Early waking

[TheWayTheLightFalls]

Hello. I know early waking can be a bit of a minefield but I suspect I’m missing something obvious. My son is up for the day at 4am most days, or just before. 9/10 months old. (He’s a twin, and his sister is on a similar schedule if a little better - so I suspect routine/timing is the issue.)

Currently:
04.00 - awake. Often exhausted within the hour but we try to keep awake for 3h.

07.30 - nap. May be anywhere up to 2h long.

13.00 - nap 2. May be anywhere up to 2h long.

Bed at 18.30. Sleeps through.

With lots of milk and increasing quantities of solids during the day.

I’d leave him to it but it just escalates until he is screaming.

I have a hunch that the (first?) nap is too long.

Help!

If he is napping at 7:30 he isn’t getting enough sleep during the night. Could you put back bedtime a bit? Maybe an hour so you get to 5:30 am. Once you get that sorted. sorted cut their morning nap to 1 hour.

How do you put him to sleep? Do you rock him to sleep or does he self settle

Would he take a bottle at 4am and go back to sleep?

I don't understand why you try to keep him awake for 3 hours and then let him sleep at 7.30? Just let him go back to sleep when he needs to and start the rest of your day when he wakes after that?

I dont have twins so don't know how practical it is, but I always brought my daughter into bed and she could play quietly in the dark/have a bf while I kept my eyes shut and she'd often fall asleep again. She wasn't sleeping through at the age your is though

Thanks both. Bottle at 4am - no, he’ll take some milk in his bed but won’t then settle again.

He self-settles @Newpuppymummy , and can settle himself down at other times (such as if he stirs at night). We did Ferber.

I don't understand why you try to keep him awake for 3 hours and then let him sleep at 7.30? Just let him go back to sleep when he needs to and start the rest of your day when he wakes after that?

@BigSidLittleSid I suppose because I find his current schedule dysfunctional, so I don’t want to encourage it by saying “OK, so you get up at 4, have a nap at 5 and then get up again at 7, and have another nap at 10” - he is so clearly not getting enough sleep (wakes up looking tired) so something is wrong. Plus I have three kids and a job, so having one on his own schedule that includes a 4am start isn’t feasible. They end up tag-teaming all day and it is awful.

I think fundamentally your issue is the morning nap is far too long and at the wrong time and overall there is just far too much day sleep. But given the nature of when he’s waking at the moment, you aren’t going to be able to fix it by cutting the morning nap on its own.

As an interim, I’d get him up at 4, keep it really boring and then put him back down again at 5 or 5:30 and then get him up again at 7 and treat that as the ‘proper’ start to your day. Then you can structure your day better. So 30 min nap 9:30-10 then your 2h nap, starting at 13:00. Id then push bedtime back to 19:00 at the earliest, preferably 19:30 (average overnight sleep at this age is 9-11h, with 2-3h of naps). Within a week or so of doing that I reckon you’ll abolish that 4am blip.

My LO is nearly 5 months so quite a bit younger but is on a similar routine apart from has bottles with wakings.

He wakes up at 5am, has a bottle & goes back to sleep by 6am then wakes up 7.45/8am for the day.

10/10.30am - nap for approx 1hour (1 and half hours max)

2.30/3pm - nap for approx 2 hours

7pm - sleeps on the sofa until we wake him for his bedtime bottle at 9.30pm.

10.30pm - sleep in bed until 5am

If he is tired again by 5/5.30am, i would let him go back to sleep when he wants and push his morning nap back.

Is the light waking him up at 4am?

I'd definitely let him sleep again as soon as he needs it instead of stretching it out to 7:30am. But I'd also try to put bedtime to 7:30pm or even 8pm. But whatever changes you make don't look too much into the results until a whole week of doing it has passed. You've got to be in it for the long run.

@ChubbyCaterpillar no, they sleep in what is basically a windowless room.

@AliceW89 we started doing what you suggested yesterday, and this morning had a 05.15 wake up from this baby, and 05.30 from the other! So much better already. Carrying on with this. They were both down for naps by 06.30, up again by 7.15 and then we went from there. Fingers crossed. Thank you very much.