Waking up over an hour early crying, 19 months. Please help!

[sellotape12]

I don’t know why, but my 19 month old is losing over an hour of night sleep. He’s started waking up with tears and major upset between 5.45 - 6.10 am. That’s an hour and a quarter earlier than normal. It’s been going on a month. It’s not teething and I can’t see anything in the gums. He is however waking up with a dirty nappy rather than doing a late morning poo.
I also wonder if he’s hungry? He gets three healthy meals at home or in nursery, and I give him snacks like a babybel, some yoghurt or a banana in between those meals. On nursery days he also has a little bit of something when we get home at 6pm because they have tea there early.
His room is v dark and quiet we have a good bedtime routine. He used to do 12 hours or a bit less. These shorter nights mean he’s very hard to wake from his lunchtime nap.

I’m desperate for help because being woken up by piercing screams before you’re ready to wake up yourself is affecting both parents - we start our day pumped with adrenaline.
By the way, nothing will resettle him, it’s not like a bit of whimpering. He is full on raging and only happy once he’s in the highchair.

usual routine was
Wakeup: 7:15
Nap: 12:15 - 2:15 give or take 15 mins
Winding down begins: 7pm
In cot: 7:15 - 7:30

thank you so much for replying

Bumping out of desperation

I'm not sure there's much you can do if he is waking because he needs a poo (at that age he won't be pooing in his sleep), doing the poo, and then crying because he's got a dirty nappy. But the adjustments you could try are: feed him a bit more in the evening (my DS has a full second tea when he gets home at 6pm, not just a snack), and make sure you wake him from his nap even if he doesn't want to. I guess you could also try putting him to bed a bit later, but it might just be that you just end up temporarily going to bed earlier yourselves and getting up before he cries - then you're still starting your day earlier than you want, but there's been less crying and adrenaline.

At 19 months old your baby needs 12-14 hours sleep in a 24 hour period with at least 10 overnight, so if he’s going to bed at 19:15 and waking up at 5:45 that’s about 10.5 hours overnight plus he’s having a two hour nap that is 12.5 hours overall so although at the lower end of normal it’s a reasonable amount of sleep for his age. It sounds like it may just be that now he’s getting older he needs less sleep overnight and so is waking earlier, could you try moving his bedtime back a bit later if you want him to sleep a bit later in the morning?

Is he waking up screaming or is he waking up and babbling or grumbling/ whimpering for a bit quietly but because that’s not loud enough to wake you it’s then escalating to a scream? If he has a dirty nappy it is understandable he is getting upset and needs someone to go into him to sort it.

@MolkosTeenageAngst the truth is we don’t know how long before he’s woken up as our monitor is a basic one. We could put a Nest cam in there and find out if he’s actually waking even earlier and we only hear him when it get bad.
Uh and yes I know the online sleep schedules all suggest 12-14 total sleep, it’s hard when a) he was doing a total of 13.5 until four weeks ago and b) every one of his peers at nursery or our NCT group are getting 7-7 and a two hour nap. Many of them are actually getting 6:30-7am night and a 2.5 hour nap!! Every time I mention in the playground his wakeup time, they all look sympathetically and call him an early riser.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, it could be over tiredness and an early bedtime (6.30pm) can really help

@BarnacleBeasley Yes you’re right. When we put him to bed later it makes no difference, so sometimes results in only a ten hour night (and a grumpy boy the day after). I wonder if I should trim the nap to 1.5 hours total instead of 2.
And oh yeah, I never realised that of course he’s not pooing in his sleep at this age like he was when he was a baby. But he does have toddler diarrhoea, meaning he just has a fast gut (apparently it’s a phenomenon at this age. Paediatrician said it’s just a thing and really common).

Out of interest when you feed DS a full meal after nursery, what’s your portion size like? I wonder if I should increase mine to something the size of my fist. Mine happily eats loads

Pretty normal waking time lie ins don't happen with babies so you've been lucky so far. He sleeps enough over the day...don't cut his day time nap that's important for learning and development just go to bed earlier

The sleep his peers are getting isn’t really relevant, some babies will be on the low end of normal just as some will be at the higher end, it sounds like you might just have a baby who needs less sleep than some of your friends. You shouldn’t be trying to force more sleep just to fit with your NCT friends - yes he is an early riser, but 6am is definitely not outside of the norm for babies. I can understand why if a month ago he was waking up later you are missing that, but that was last month and this is this month, his sleep pattern will change as he gets older and this won’t be the only or last change.

How is he during the day? Is he happy and his usual self? If he’s not presenting as tired and grumpy then it sounds like he’s getting enough sleep so I wouldn’t be worrying. Obviously if he’s miserable during the day due to his sleep I can see why you’re upset; if his routine is to have a poo at around 6am maybe try either putting him to bed a bit earlier or feeding him a bit earlier so that he’s had more sleep before the need to poo hits.

@MolkosTeenageAngst Thanks, yes comparison is really hurting me. We seem to be in two groups where randomly, lots of them have high sleep needs babies. When you say feed him earlier due to dawn pooing, do you mean later? Surely earlier will mean he poos earlier? Or maybe I misunderstood. Thanks

Yes, sorry I meant to feed him later in the hope he will poo later!

And honestly, comparison is the thief of joy! I understand it must be hard if your friends are sleeping longer than yours, but honestly up your baby is still sleeping through for over 10 hours which is great. There are plenty of toddlers his age who still wake up one or more times in the night and those who are waking at 5am etc, if you were friends with their parents you would probably feel pretty happy with your son’s sleep!

All three of mine went through an early waking stage at around 18months, it’s quite normal. Two went back to later wakings after a while, the other stayed as an early riser. If he is going down to sleep early then go to bed a bit earlier if you are tired.

@MolkosTeenageAngst yes thank you so much for your perspective today. I’ve struggled with the comparison thing for the entirety of motherhood. We are trying to go to bed ourselves at 9:45pm to catch up on sleep but always hard when you’re trying to wind down from work too! Anyway fingers crossed we adjust somehow 😀 he’s still a great baby

@sellotape12 we just let him eat till he's full. Sometimes he eats more than my partner! He's not fat, so we think he probably needs it all.

Ear infection/glue ear?

I don't think that it can be true that every single one of the kids at nursery and in your NCT group is sleeping perfectly from 7-7 plus 2 hour nap or more.

At 18/19 months old nearly a quarter of babies still wake twice a night so I'd be astonished if not a single one of the babies in your circle didn't. I wonder if it's like those people who say their newborns or very young babies sleep 7-7 but then it turns out that they're up multiple times a night.

Anyway I digress! if anything I would try and limit his nap time to have him sleep a bit longer over night and see how you go. My DC is the same age as yours and we limit her nap to 1hr20 or try and make sure she's up by 1.30pm so as not to impact bedtime too much, but before this week she's never been a great sleeper so we can't let her nap too long.

I would try cutting the nap at that age, mine is only 4 months older than yours and we’ve recently starting capping at 30mins. We were capping at 1 hour from 15 months.

Today he had an unavoidable 45 min nap which ended at 12.15pm - he is currently full of energy and I doubt he’ll be asleep before 9pm.

I’ve found they get to a stage where the nap can really impact night sleep, but it takes a week or so to figure out if it’s working.

DS only really started sleeping 10ish hours straight through a month or so ago (does go down for longer, just needs a resettle at around 5.30ish) and has never done 12hrs at night. I totally get how comparisons can bring you down when yours is getting less sleep.

You say you could see he wakes up before he ends up crying. I wonder if it is being alone in the dark room that makes him scared hence the cry. I have 16.5m and since few weeks now she has started waking up 5am-6am instead of 7-7.30am. Tonight I gave her late dinner at 7pm and she ate to point she didn't open her mouth when I put fork with food in front of her. She fell asleep 7.30pm and I am testing if this late dinner makes her wake up later. She definitely wakes up 5am onwards when she hasn't eaten enough during the day. And gosh she likes to eat. I feel like sometimes her portion size is bigger than mine.