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4am wakes

1 reply

CuddingtonBear · 15/07/2024 06:29

Am hoping somebody can please offer me some advice. My nearly 13 month old has been waking up between 4-5 since she was around 8 months old and the early morning wakes are exhausting me. When she wakes, if I give her some milk she will then go back to sleep around 75% of the time for an hour or so.

Her current routine is she naps for 30 mins in the morning and 30 mins in the afternoon. She won’t do longer than 30 mins even though she is still clearly tired. Because of this, she then tends to be exhausted by 6/6:30 and needs to go to bed. Even if it’s a rare good nap day and she goes to bed later then she will still wake up 4-5.

When she wakes that early I have to get her up; if I leave her then she will wake her 4 year old brother and they’ll then both be up at the crack of dawn.

For the last month or so, around 80% of the time she has started to sleep through until 4/5. This is a huge improvement and I’m really grateful for this as a few months ago I didn’t even think this would be possible. However I do think she isn’t getting enough nighttime sleep as she’ll be ready for a nap by around 7:30. I don’t let her go for a nap until 9 at the earliest. She can self settle for bedtime and naps.

Any suggestions gratefully received, thanks.

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
Rose2108 · 23/07/2024 20:05

Hiya, I'm no expert but wanted to leave my experience/advice. My son was always a cat-napper, and a 4am riser! It was tough for a few months. Firstly just wanted to say that literally everything with parenting and kids is a phase. This is what I tell myself to get through the harder times.

If I were you I'd suggest two things - firsrly, drop the morning nap and move to one longer nap. Kids all have different sleep needs and body clocks, I found when I moved to one nap at around the same age, he suddenly napped for like 2 hours?! We started with it being around 11 - 1 and gradually pushed it back, it was 1 - 2.30 for a solid year or so (yes I would wake him at 2.30). The morning nap was just a chance for him to catch up on what he missed that morning, but he wasn't quite tired enough for a "proper nap".

Secondly, something that really works is disturbing their sleep cycle for a week or so. It sounds mental- set your alarm for 3am, go and disturb her, not enough to wake her but just to disturb her cycle, and I bet she Will sleep a bit longer.

When we see a 5 on the alarm clock we feel like we've had a lay in now!!! Good luck x

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