4:30/5am wakes - did anything work for you?

[ChiquitayouandIKnow]

DS is 10 months. Can settle himself to sleep, goes to bed at about 6:30, and is always up 4:30/5am - it’s a killer! I have cut down his morning nap and he sleeps for around 2 hours at lunchtime.

when he wakes, sometimes milk resettled him but much less so these days. He’s just sitting up screaming in his cot ready to start his day.

did anything work for you? I remember my DD used to do this but it was more like 5/530 which was better.

What worked for me was the advice to treat every waking before 7am as a night waking. So leave in cot/bed, go in and calm/settle/reassure as you would during the night, but don't engage, be boring etc, then leave again. This requires full blackout in the room. I didn't use a gro clock, but just had a small lamp on a timer for 7am. Didn't take long for them to work it out.

@LegoLady95 this would be my approach, but 2yo DD is in the room next door and so don’t want her being woken up. Mind you it might just be a bit of a thing we have to ride through for a few days to get it sorted.

I envy those who could do that but it just doesn’t work here. Once DS is awake he’s ready to start the day. If I left him at 615 until 7 he’d just cry until I got him up.

Look up split night sleep and sleep pressure. Download the huckleberry app. Life saver for us at this age.

If your baby is waking up in the middle of the night they need more sleep pressure. Meaning they are probably napping too much. It’s time to either drop a nap or shorten it. You can use the huckleberry app to track napping and walking to figure out when they are waking up and which nap they are struggling with the most and what changes will have the best improvements to their nighttime sleep.

Came to say this.

My son is 9 months old and the same. He slept in until 6am for 3 days in a row last week (for no discernable reason) and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. We're back to the 5am wakes now. I've literally tried everything and read the whole Internet and I'm kind of just resigned to him being one of them kids that wakes up at 5am...and live in hope he may one day stop it.

There is also the option of waking them up earlier or putting them to bed later. Either way their wake windows that create said sleep pressure are too short so they don’t have enough sleep pressure to keep them alseep all night long.

6:30 is very early. Try 8! It will take a couple of weeks before you see improvement.

He is sleeping for 10.5 hours, so I think that is quite normal. The 6.30pm bedtime is what's killing you though. It isn't easy to shift but if you could manage to change bedtime to 8.30pm and he slept 10.5 hours he would be up at 7, which would be more palatable.

I have always gone with later bedtimes myself because I couldn't face the 5am starts and prefer to sacrifice the evening, but when I say this to other parents they look at me like I am totally crazy

He's sleeping for the right amount of time, he's just in a different time zone isn't he. That sounds hellish.

Ideally he'd be going to bed later. Are you able to move his morning nap forward and shorten it, then have a mid afternoon nap so he isn't quite so tired at 6.30? I would keep him awake by any means necessary to achieve this.

Does he have a dream feed at midnight or so? Is he waking hungry? Can you juggle his food intake so he is getting something substantial later in the day.

I take it you have the black out blinds working effectively...

I wouldn't assume later bedtime doesn't work if you've only tried it briefly. Moving into a different time zone takes adjustment. At the beginning it might work because he's tired sooner but you really want his sleep pattern to change which takes longer to achieve.

Thanks for your replies.

so last night he woke at 3am, had some milk and slept until 7am! So I do wonder if it’s hunger, plus us shifting back his clock a bit.

He eats three big meals in the day, plus 26oz of milk throughout the day. Dinner at 5pm and milk before bed. I’m not sure how much more food I can get into him? He is a really big boy though!

I will push bedtime back to 7pm, I often have to wake him from his afternoon nap at 3, so he probably isn’t tired enough come 6:30/6:45 and could comfortably go later.

@grumpytoddler1 I'm the same !

Make sure any black out blinds don't let any chinks of light in - I gaffer-taped ours all around the edges, it did help a bit.

So we are still in 4:30/5am wake up hell.

there have been a couple of 5:45 wake ups which gave us some false hope.

we have tried black out blinds and it’s actually a bit darker at that time but still no luck. Later bedtimes, controlled crying for the wakes and nothing works. He is 13 months now, and still has two naps because he is so shattered. Wondering if moving to one nap would make a difference but can’t even try when he wakes so early.

any other ideas? Back at work and we are all exhausted and arguing over whose turn it is to get up!

No...they just grow out of it. First DC grew out of it at about 18 months...second seems to be (touch wood) growing out of it at nearly 2.

My Ds has just turned two and only reducing his one nap (plus a Power Nap in the car to nursery max 15 mins) to 1 hour / 1 hour 15 mins max stopped the 4.45am / 5am wake ups and this only happened very recently (in the last month or so) He is so much happier getting more quality sleep during the night so restricting the daytime nap has really helped us.