18 month old 4:45am wake ups

[Raddyradiator]

DD used to wake up at 6:30/before she turned 1 but then suddenly turned to an early riser (5:30am usually). We could deal with this.

Over the past few weeks it's gotten worse and she wakes around 4:45am and we are breaking as she wakes wailing and screaming and won't resettle or go back to sleep. she's been crying now since 4:45am.

her routine is roughly as follows:

wake up anytime between 4:45-5:30

nap 1: 12/12:30pm (usually 1.5 - 2 hours)

wake up 2pm ish

in cot for bed:7:00pm

we are fairly consistent with bed time and she falls asleep by herself.

when She wakes we usually give her 20 mins or so to see if re-settles then either I or DH go get her. She is breastfed.

as soon as I get her she instantly stops crying. She won't go to sleep in our bed and she just pops up/jabbers/continuously tries to get out of bed. I usually breastfeed her then DH or I takes her downstairs while the other sleeps.

I don't know what to do and how to resolve this. She sometimes has shorter naps at the childminder but this does nothing to change her wake ups.

her room temp is fine and her room is dark. the only thing I can think of is maybe some noise from outside wakes her up so we have tried white noise but it just seems to make things worse because she screams harder in the mornings when it is on.

any tips? I have a 4 year old DS who sleeps in a separate room and she sometimes wakes him up and we really can't continue like this. Surely it's not healthy for her either?!

I would love a 6am wake up if possible. Please help!!!

Interested as DD is the same

I should also add on my days off I sometimes take DD out for an early walk around 8/9am to fit in a short nap to help her through the morning but it doesn't work 90% of the time.

@Pompom2367 it's just awful isn't it

I had (and am) one of these. Larkiness (early rising) is largely genetic however things you can do.

1. Cut the 8am-9am sleep completely this is reinforcing the early wake ups
2. When DS was 18m I stopped cot naps completely, would give him 30-45mins in the buggy whilst out and about.
3. Could you push bedtime any later DS would only ever do 10.5hours overnight 11 at a push (rarely) so to get a 6-6:30 wake up bedtime needed to be 7:30.

In short at 18m my larkish DS (who is now 18yo and does'nt need much sleep) Woke 6-6:30, slept 12:30-1 or 1:15 and went to bed 7:30-7:45. That was a good as it got was in awe of people who got 12 hrs at night and 2 hours in the day, his was just never built that way.

Hope that helps💐☕

I have no tips but just to protect your own health, can you start going to bed earlier as a damage limitation tactic. Then at least you aren't exhausted and can think clearly about what to do.

I get up at 5am every day and am in bed by 10.

www.littleones.co/blog/up-with-the-larks-tackling-early-waking

What age is she now? If she's only just one then this isn't going to work but my son started doing this at 16 months and what worked for us was that I refuse breastmilk until the morning (he's been night-weaned since one year old).

So when he started waking at half 4 I went in to him and explained that milk is for the morning and it's not morning yet. I approached it the same way as we did sleep training. Gave him a cuddle and said, "it's night time, time to sleep" and put him back in his cot. A few nights of being up and down doing this and he's woken at 6 on the dot ever since. We've since bought a gro clock to reinforce the message. He has one two hour nap at 12 and sleeps 7-6. If he woke at half 4 he'd never make it to the 12 o'clock nap and everything would go to pot.

Agree with @CheeseDreamsTonight, our DD wakes between 4.30am and 5.30am (13mo) every morning so we're in bed by 8pm, asleep by 8.30pm. She's also breast fed and it literally started as soon as she turned 1, before that she slept 7.30pm to 7am every day (sob). Now it's 7.30pm (if I'm luckily, usually she messes around until just before 8) until the early morning. If she starts sleeping well again I'm not going to take it for granted!!!

We give her bottles of expressed milk before bed, this does seem to help. She can destroy 200ml of breast milk in 10 mins before bed but if I allow her to breastfeed she'll happily be there for an hour. Pumpings a faff but at least it gives us shorter bed times!

We are in exactly the same boat!! We were already downstairs at 5am this morning. I am hoping it will just be a phase, I feel like it's more FOMO than anything else. I don't have any tips but I am going to sleep around 9.30pm myself as I don't know how long these early starts will last.

How about instead of giving her 20 mins in her cot to see if she falls back asleep (does she ever fall back asleep?), go and get her at the first peep, latch her on and fall back asleep yourself. She will likely still be sleepy that way and fall asleep with you?

DS 18mo is the same (usually) although his nap is a bit later but after last night I have given up. He asked for a bath at 4 (!) even though bed is at 7. He hardly ate a thing for dinner. Ended up putting him to bed 45 minutes early. And it’s now after 630 and he’s not awake (stirred and chatted to himself for a bit at 5 and I’ve been awake since ready to leap into action). So unpredictable. Yesterday he had 20-30 minutes in the car in the morning and an hour in the afternoon (normally 1.5-2.5 in the afternoon). And he went outside twice.
So I have no advice except lots of fresh air.

Every child is different but my son completely dropped his naps by this age and slept from 7 to 7.30.

Just cut out the morning power nap - it's making up for the early wake up.

I've been in this position a lot. You need to cut the morning nap, as a previous poster said.

You also really need to leave her in her cot until 6 or even 6.30. We went in every 5 mins to reassure but otherwise just left them.

It's quite hard core but it does work.

I would've have;

• Cut out nap
• Stop breastfeeding
• let her CIO do she self-soothes

She's already what happens when she screams, and you are reinforcing.

I agree with PP that it's in the genes unfortunately.

I had a 445am riser and it was tough. Nothing we did or tweaked made any difference. When old enough we went for a grow clock and ignored the requests to get up until something reasonable like 6am.

Shes now a teenager and still gets up early. 7-8am even at weekends. My other child loves sleep and has to be woken for school each day and would sleep till lunchtime at the weekend if I let them and is still at primary age.

Same parents and same routines! Just how they are built sometimes.

Thanks all. Another 4:45am wake up today from DD and also 4am from 4 year old DS who threw up all over our bed/pillows/duvet 😅to top it all off the washing machine decided to pack it in yesterday so great timing all round.

I've decided to cry it out from tomorrow and restrict breastfeeding to from 7am. She's clearly tired when she wakes and I think it's just a really bad habit now. The hard part with cry it out is waking DS but we might just have to grit our teeth and get on with it.

I wish she was one of those kids that just fell asleep on the breast or fell asleep in bed with us but she just isn't like that. I tried cuddling her to sleep this morning for a good hour and it didn't work.

she doesn't really have a morning nap anymore