15 month old wakes for the day at 4am

[LoveYouHoneybear]

I've posted about her early wakes before, and I am posting again because I feel so frustrated and alone. My daughter is 15 months and routinely wakes at 4 or 4:30am for the day. Sometimes even 3:45am. There is no resettling! She just screams bloody murder until we get her up. I try changing her diaper, giving a bottle, stay and support, Ferber. Nothing works. She just screams and screams and then needs a nap around 8am because she is shattered. Bedtime is 6pm because she is so tired- usually has two 45 min naps during the day. I'm struggling so much and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

@Mazuslongtoenail that is such great advice. I have definitely been starting my day with a "grrrr" and it's not serving me well! Will work on changing my attitude/accepting things as they are...

I got her down for a 7:05pm bedtime tonight so I'm hoping this can be a new trend. Im under no illusion that she will sleep in tomorrow, but with time I'm hoping things will change! Thank you all so much for helping me in a particularly dark moment of despair!

I'm overseas hence the bizarre time stamps FYI. :)

I think your issue is the 2 naps; by her age it should be 1 long lunch time nap. I’d then get her up and out in the mornings so she’s getting lots of sunlight and movement, then make sure she’s not going to bed hungry or thirsty. Check also she’s not getting cold?

As frustrating and tiring as it is some children are just wired this way. My dc was exactly the same at that age. I tried everything but the only thing that did work was letting them sleep when they were tired during the day. As odd as it sounds the longer the naps, the more he slept at night. DC was so much happier like this and was still having a nap at 4 years and struggled to drop it. However, they will now sleep in until 6am at the age of 5 and a half. DC will still occasionally have a nap particularly if we are in the car but they had a 2 hour nap one day during feb half term and still slept well at night.

I wouldn’t push bedtime back. We also do a 6pm bedtime and a later bedtime makes no difference to his morning wake ups. I also find that 6pm is his sweet spot for falling asleep. If I try any later he’ll fight bedtime.

I’d try to move the 8am nap to 9am maybe. And maybe make the 9am a 2 hour nap and keep it to one nap.

But honestly, it’s so hit and miss. For example my DS was up at 4.30am on Monday and woke up at 6am today. I did nothing different. Same bedtime and same nap time. Some days he’s just more sleepy 🤷🏻‍♀️

Oh gosh, mine went through a 5am stage that lasted 3 years. You have my sympathy OP.

You need to cut the 8am nap to 20 mins. Down again at 12.30 for two hours max.
Bed 7-7.30 ish. Be consistent.
The morning nap will eventually phase out and they'll just do one long lunchtime nap.
Look at the wake to sleep method too. I did this with my youngest. I essentially woke her gently at 10am every eve. All she had to do was open her eyes and then I'd put her back down. It re-sets their sleep cycle. It took about 2 works of consonant work, but we now get wake-ups between 6-7.
Good luck!

@smooshraspberry starting this regime today! Wish me luck... I reckon it will be hard to wake her from that morning nap but I am determined. Going to whisk her off to the pool for a swim, which she loves.

@Rosiiee going to try the 7pm nap time for a couple weeks, but you might be right and. I'll end up going back to 6pm if it doesn't work!

Oh god I feel your pain, Dd used to do this and I did think I might die from tiredness at one point, not even exaggerating!

Unfortunately for us I tried everything and she had to grow out of it. Keeping everything crossed for you your Dd takes to nap changes - let us know.

I used to give Dd my phone locked onto bbc iplayer on cbeebies and she would watch that in bed with me whilst I got another hour. The only way I could function.

Shes 7 now and still an early riser, but at 6am which I can absolutely cope with!

Does she sleep straight through from 6am to 4am? Or is she waking and resettling in between.

DS went through a phase of this and I read somewhere (probably on MN) that I needed to try pre-empting the wake up. So basically, for whatever reason, when he woke up at 4:30am, he ocundn't re-settle so I had to break the cycle. I did that by getting up myself at about 4:15 and half waking him, and resettling him and then sitting with him through that 4:30 wake up. The idea being that he then wouldn't actually wake up as he'd settled happily back into a deep sleep.

It did actually work and after a few days we went back to waking up at about 5:30/6.

Also, if she struggles with sleep during the day, I totally feel your pain as she's then shattered at night. I disagree with forcing her to stay up later if she's tired. I'd do the opposite. Option 1 - do whatever it takes to get her have another or a longer nap - DS would sleep in the car in the afternoon so we often did that. It wasn't ideal, but it meant that he had that short afternoon nap and then wasn't as tired so could last until 6:30/7pm. OR... and this is controversial and scary... put her to bed even earlier. It's quite difficult though because even without the routine aspects, I think body clocks know. But arguably, at this age, nighttime sleep should be closer to 12 hours than 10 so if you put her down at 5:30 and she then slept 12 hours, she'd wake at 5:30am.

@JonVoightBaddyWhoGrowls She sleeps through to 4am, thankfully. That preemptive wake sounds very interesting/promising. I'll give it a shot!

When I put her down at 7:05pm last night, she woke up at 3:45am but managed to resettle until 5am! Which is huge for us! She was knackered at 9am and I gave her a 15 min nap on the way to the pool. Hoping she has a good afternoon nap and we can continue with the 7pm bedtime. 🤞
(Overseas so it's only noon here!)

My boy sleeps worse when he's had no nap in the day. Get the daytime naps right and I think you'll see a difference. I don't let him sleep past 3.

Update: our second night of pushing her bedtime to 7pm and she slept until 6:15am which is UNPRECEDENTED. She woke at her usual 4:30, so I changed her diaper, gave her a bottle and a cuddle, and put her back down. She used to cry and cry but this morning she had a little whine and then went back to sleep. I am buzzing! Will continue with this 7pm bedtime and work on cutting down the morning nap completely. Thank you all so much for your help, genuinely grateful to MN!

Oh that’s such good news op, you must feel like a new woman! Fingers crossed it keeps getting better from here on out.

So pleased it's going well so far!

I was going to ask, what happens if you don't go in? I realize I have a bit of a strange DC, we realized when she was very little, like 8 weeks, that sometimes she would wake up and my instinct was to immediately feed her/change her etc. but we realized that she would often go back to sleep on her own after 10-15 minutes of just quietly looking around (which ultimately led to her sleeping through very early, we were actually disturbing her sleep by doing the feed/change thing). When she got older she would wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes for an hour, and just be chatting to her kitty in her cot (when she was around 1). We tried going in, but she didn't need anything, she was just awake. We listened to her on the monitor for like a year and finally convinced DH to turn it off (sound monitor outside the door we could hear crying on) after a year of no crying and waking up every night. Now as a 5 yo, I think she sometimes still wakes up in the night but again just chats to her kitty/tells herself stories. Do you think your DC might move towards just resettling herself if you don't go in at all? It sounds like she is moving in that direction?

Push her nap later....the earlier they nap in the morning, the earlier they will wake.
I pushed my son's nap by 5-10 minutes every day. It did get better, but it took a while!

So pleased for you. They change all the time at that age. Mine always went to bed late so we could spend time together in evening

@Slippersandrum it was good! Put her down at 7pm and she woke at 4:45am for her usual cry 🙄 and after I did the bottle, diaper, and cuddle, she slept for another hour. It is helpful that we had daylight savings time! So we are now one hour later which I think (I hope) will help our cause!

@Happyhappyday yes I am hoping she is moving in the direction of resettling- she goes down very easily at night but it's this persistent 4am/4:30am wake up that she just cries and cries for! No amount of leaving her has worked thus far...

She needs one long lunchtime nap.

7pm bedtime

Ooh just read your update, good result

Another update: she slept from 7pm straight through to 6am! Unbelievable. Huge progress for us! Will be able to give her one long lunch time nap today, no 15 minute morning nap needed. :)