10 month waking early daily since 5 months old

[Ehc1989]

My 10 month old has woken early since he was around 5 months old and it's draining me. Today was 4:45am but usually he wakes between 5-5:45am. Every time I make any change in his schedule he adapts and wakes later for about a week then back to early mornings. He's roughly (as in that first WW never happens as he never wakes at DWT of 6:30am) is 3/3.5/4. He's definitely a low sleep needs baby as only naps for 30-40 minutes in the morning & about 1.5 max in afternoon. I have to wake him at 3pm most days to pick my eldest child up from school. He's usually asleep anywhere between 7-7:15pm. Any suggestions to make his morning wake any later?? First nap is never earlier than 9:30am. Sleep trained - goes down to sleep independently

My DD is 11.5 months and wakes early from overtiredness if she has a last wake window of over 3.5 hours. I know it’s counter intuitive but I think an earlier bed may help

Two suggestions:

5am-ish sees a dip in temperature, make sure he is warm enough so not waking from the cold.

Push back in your last feeding time until a little later in the evening and make sure his little tummy is full so he's not waking from hunger.

Dry and put Vaseline on regularly during the day and before bed. Put a bit more on before you go to bed yourself. I'm sure you'll notice a difference.

I'm afraid this is totally normal. Your best bet is to get an early night yourself.

It may improve when he drops down to one nap, but then again, it may not- my 19 month old still wakes between 5 and 6 most mornings!

Not sure how this will help?!

Mine was like this I decided to just accept it, it was too energy consuming fighting it. He didn't start sleeping till 6am until around age 4. He is still up before 7 most days and he's a teenager now!

Nooooo 🙈 I was really hoping the 5am wake up call from my 11 month old was a phase (that has lasted his entire life). I don't think I can deal with years more of this 😭
My 3 year old sleeps until past 8 if you let him. So I don't think it's my parenting. Pray for me 😂

@neverwakeasleepingbaby i literally just said the same to my husband. I do go to bed and usually always asleep by 9:30pm but it still hurts seeing 4 something or early 5’s on the clock in the morning.
He’s definitely not waking hungry & we have heating set to be a consistent temperature all night. In the summer I thought it could be a bit of light getting in but clearly not as it’s pitch black at 4:45!!! I am dreading the clock change and seeing 3 something on the clock 😂
2 weeks ago I had 6 days of him waking between 6-6:45am and it was heaven. He was so happy in the mornings but usually he’s sooo whingy all morning till nap time!

IME this is also normal. My 3 year old still wakes between 5-6 most days, my older child between 6-7. I wish I had kids that I have to wake in the mornings.

It’s nice not to feel alone lol
My 4.5 year old sleeps 7:30pm-7am (we went through long periods of early morning waking with her but never this bad or consistently) and I just can only pray he ends up sleeping in later eventually. It’s soul destroying when I’m up with the baby at 5 and she’s sound asleep and I know I could be sleeping also 😅
I absolutely know I shouldn’t moan as he does sleep solidly till then, don’t ever hear a peep out of him so it could definitely be worse. I solo parent a lot as my husband works away so the days just feel so long sometimes. I’m desperate to get back to exercising but I can’t do it before he wakes up (well I refuse to do it at 4am) and by 7pm there is no energy left in me!

That's an early bedtime. My kids it was 7.30-45pm. One child would sleep in a bit but my son rarely made it to 6am, 5.30 more common. But you know he's 21 now and still up early! If a work day often at 6am to get a run in beforehand (plus he does sport most evenings). Some kids just don't need the sleep.

@mondaytosunday we’ve just always done a 7pm bedtime with my daughter & it worked well. Having to wake my baby at 3pm for school run means I can’t have bedtime currently much later than 7pm! Maybe as he gets older he’ll be able to go to bed a bit later

@Ehc1989 it's not ideal but maybe we can look forward to the age when we can shove an iPad at them until say 6:30am when I'm more willing to get up!

@neverwakeasleepingbaby haha yes! Or just they learn to sleep in naturally till then. Oh one can dream.
I actually felt earlier his top tooth is just cutting through so could partly explain the hellish-ly early wake up this morning but not the ongoing early mornings for months 😂

My son was like this, he would wake any time from 4:15 - 5:20 as a baby and he didn't really start sleeping to 6am until he was 4 years old. We tried so many different things. Some are just like this. Exhausting isn't it. Sorry love.

@Ehc1989

Infant sleep consultant here 🙋‍♀️

You mentioned he's sleep trained, did you do this yourself or use a consultant? If the latter, can you reach out for some advice?

That early wake up is not normal or sustainable and without having much background info here I'm waging that he's not having enough daytime sleep for his age! 😊

@wombpaloumbpa 4!! Bless you. This is what scares me lol
@sellingupslow all myself - for nights I just practiced putting him down awake from 3 months old & he grasped it so well. Naps were a bit more of a challenge when he rejected his dummy from 3.5 months old so I did a gentle Ferber with him at 4.5 months. Only took 2/3 days and worked a treat. So from that perspective that’s all I have done to “train” him. I’ve never had to go and rock him, Pat etc. When he goes to bed at 7pm ish I don’t hear a sound from him till this 4:45-5:50 wakings. It’s rarely before 5 I’ll add.

@Ehc1989

Wow, well done, that's amazing! ☺️

It's very likely he's overtired. He's having far too little daytime sleep for his age which can be the reason for his early wakings (I'd need a full breakdown of his schedule to confirm this)

I know it sounds counterintuitive but it's most likely the cause 😬

@sellingupslow Thanks 😂
So a general day is:
Nap 1 is 9:45-10:20 usually (give or take 10 minutes each side)
Nap 2 is 1:45-3pm ( I have to wake him to pick my daughter from school). But I will add if my husband is home or weekends he will only ever sleep a max of about 1 hour 15 minutes for this nap.
When I transitioned him to 2 naps I let him sleep as long as he wanted for nap 1 but then would only ever get 30 mins for 2nd nap and pretty much continued waking early. I remembered from advice from my daughter & online advice that he was likely catching up on night sleep so I cap that nap which gives me the longer afternoon nap. This worked for about a week but since then early mornings happened again. If I try him on even 1 hour for nap 1 I won’t get longer than 30 mins for his next nap. I definitely believe he’s a low sleep needs baby - he’s barely slept from birth 😂

@sellingupslow 5:25 this morning. Cried till 6am then I just had to get him up as he was going to wake my daughter. He had exactly a 4 hour ww before bed last night. Any advice would be hugely appreciated!

@Ehc1989

Without doing a full consultation, he's over-tired. 4 hours is too long a wake window, especially before bed.

I will reply later with some suggestions, but if you'd like more support I'm happy for you to dm me and I can send you to my website and we can have a call!

Also, @Ehc1989 when I do a consultation with a client, I get a detailed diary from them for 3-5 days as there might be something else that you've not mentioned (as it seems irrelevant) that's causing the wake up :)

So I don't want to say easily that it's purely the wake window, but I assume, if everything else is normal, that it's likely to be this! 😊

At that age my son was still having an hour's sleep around 5pm before going down for his actually night time sleep around 7.30/8pm. I'd agree it could be over tiredness.

I always thought mine was overtired! And he probably was but I absolutely could not get him to nap more, mind you he was 2 years at this point, you should have more luck with your baby. Good luck

DS was like this from around eight months until he was about 13 yo! No matter how late he went to bed, or how much day time sleep he had, he was just an early bird. He had an afternoon nap every day until he started school. School made no difference.