Tips for early waking 5MO

[FrizzledFrazzle]

This is maybe not the biggest sleep problem, but on top of other wakings it's too much so I would appreciate some tips.

DS is nearly 5 months. Since the clocks changed, he's been waking up to start the day at 6am. However, if he wakes after about 4.30am he won't go back to sleep in the cot. He has a feed and falls asleep on me, but wakes up and won't resettle when I put him down. Once he's woken up, he then won't go back to sleep at all.

I am extremely grumpy about getting up at 5am after an already broken night. Any tips for fixing this? Or for feeling less hacked off about it?

Since the sleep regression (where we were getting almost hourly wakes for a few weeks) he typically falls asleep around 7.30pm then wakes for a feed at 11.30ish and 2ish, plus the final feed sometime after 4am. He sometimes feeds to sleep, but usually rouses as I walk him to the cot and then settles in a few minutes with his dummy. If he wakes in between those times (maybe 2 more wakes per night), he will go back to sleep with his dummy and some ssshh-ing. But this doesn't work for his final wake.

For naps, he used to have about 3 naps per day, mostly in the pram or on me. The sleep regression and early wakings has messed with this a bit, but he's generally getting about 2.5-3h of daytime sleep over the day. I would love to work on reducing contact naps, but for a grumpy mum and baby, they are currently some of the more peaceful parts of the day!

Also - he's breastfeed but takes a bottle. DH is supportive and does one of the night wakes, so I'm already feeling like a jerk for being short tempered and snappy because of lack of sleep.

Sounds like you need something of a sleep overhaul. I'd suggest your night feeds are more yo do with comfort than calories - baby is using the feed to get back to sleep.

I'd look to establish a consistently independent way to sleep, namely dummy in the cot. That means stopping contact naps to consistently teach independent settling, plus separating feeding and sleeping.

The root cause of the early wake is that baby cannot independently settle. Solving it at cause means tacking settling method overall. There are work-around alternatives to make life easier with regards to early waking, but that will be the main cause of it.

@FATEdestiny dummy in the cot is a good idea and something that I do. I'm working on teaching him to put it in himself, but he can't find it in the cot at night yet.

If he starts waking in the night I always give him the dummy in the cot first before offering milk. About half the time he is happy with this and goes right back to sleep. He even looks at me to put the dummy back if he drops it. But the other half he deliberately spits out the dummy, shuts his mouth and gets frustrated if I try to put it back. So then either I or DH get him up and feed him.

I think the night wakes are a mixture of hunger and comfort. He's always been a "little and often" feeder and the night feeds are at least as big as any of his day feeds. So he's definitely taking on milk, rather than just sucking for comfort. On the other hand, if my DH bottle feeds him at night he has a much smaller feed. So if the comfort isn't there, he's not eating as much.

If the night waking doesn't improve in the long term, I think having my DH do all the night feeds for a bit would be a good way of night weaning and encouraging him to take more of his calories in the day. But as he's only just 5 months that seems a bit early. I've not started giving him any solid food yet - it might be that his night wakes reduce anyway when I start weaning and he's eating a decent amount of solid food.

The annoying 4.30am resettling seems to be improving on its own. He went right back to sleep the last 2 nights, finally waking up (to poop) just before 6.30. DH and I are also now splitting the night more equally, so I'm not on dummy insertion duty all night, which is helping me feel a lot less tired and grumpy.

I ended up changing bed time to a later time. I couldn’t bare getting up before 7 once the newborn stage was out of the way.

At around 5 months I changed bed time to 8.45pm (into bed at 8.30). He would then wake around 7.15-7.30am. He is now 2 and a half and still goes to bed at 8.30pm but gets up ‘naturally’ at around 8am.

This works well for us, but admittedly my husband and I are night owls and don’t tend to sleep until 1am-ish so there was still plenty of free time in the evenings once son was asleep.

@Interviewnamechange a later bedtime is a possibility. He used to be totally exhausted by 6pm so it was a stretch to get him to stay awake until 7. But now I do his bath and stories around 7, aiming for him to be asleep around. And if he naps late I can push it a bit later. As he gets a bit older, this could get a bit later.

I'm broadly ok with early mornings (after 6am anyway), it's just the very early start on top of the night feeds and dummy runs that felt too much!