Early wakes

[Oliviam3]

I know some people have it so much worse and may reply saying I have nothing to rant about if my baby sleeps through but for nearly 2 months my 13 (almost 14 month) old has been waking between 5-5:30am. It’s awful. This may be normal time for some people but a natural time for a baby to wake is between 6-7am, anything before is classed as a night wake. We have tried EVERYTHING. Early bedtime, later bedtime, we don’t go get them til after 6am, the room is pitch black, there’s white noise, they never have leaking nappies, room is a good temperature, they have 1 nap consistently for 2 hours each day. It’s hard when they have woke 6:30am since they were around 5 months. Our routine currently looks like this - wake 5-5:30, get up 6am with 8oz milk, 7:30 breakfast, 11am lunch, 12-2pm, nap 2pm snack, 4:45pm dinner, 9oz bottle 7ish then bed and asleep for 7:15-7:30pm. We tried an early bedtime of 7pm, I don’t think they would be ready for bed before this as they get up at 2pm and normal wake window is 5 hours. Please help, from a very exhausted mum who’s not a morning person

I have terrible insomnia. I know I'm a grown adult (and going through menopause) but if I went to sleep at 7am, I would be up again at 12am, 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am...

Could you try and make her bed time later?

I also often have 'two sleeps' which used to be normal for most people years ago. With a couple of hours' gap in the middle.

If she naturally wakes up after 5 hours, you may be better off re-training your own sleep patterns to fit with this. Does DH get up with her? Or is it all down to you?

No real advice but solidarity. My almost 2yo still wakes at 5 everyday. Waiting for him to grow out of it.

Noticed you say wake window is 5hrs except they manage 5am-12noon? Wondering if bringing the nap a touch early would make any sort of difference? My son wakes at 5 and needs his nap by 10. Which tbh I'm not convinced isn't making things worse by allowing him to sleep when he's tired rather than dragging it out a bit.

Who knows. They won't be doing it when they're 18 eh?

On Saturday the clocks go forward so when they get up Sunday the clock will say 6/6.30am so then shift their day an hour later on new time and put them to bed at 8pm

Could they be hungry? 4.45pm is very early for a bedtime of 7.15-7.30 and I know there’s a massive milk bottle too but as they get older milk doesn’t fill them up properly. If it’s a nursery tea that you can’t push later then I’d give Weetabix or porridge or something filling about 6.30.

But the clock change should hopefully help you! It’s not long to go now.