4am wake-ups with 14-month-old

[moregarlic]

Hi all,

Can you help me with persistent 4am wake-ups with my 14-month-old?

Sleep

Nap schedule is:
9am - 10am
1.30am - 2.30pm

Bedtime is 7pm.

We sleep trained her at 6 months and she goes to sleep independently for naps and bedtime. But at 4am she is stood up at her cot wanting to get out.

I can't consolidate her nap at the moment because there is no way I can consistently drag her out from 4am until midday. I did actually try it as an experiment the other day, and it made no difference (I appreciate it would likely take longer to work).

Food

She has breastmilk around 7am and 6.30pm. She eats well and has breakfast, lunch and dinner along with a morning and afternoon snack.

Environment
She sleeps in a baby sleep bag thing in her cot, has a black out blind, white noise and the room is a consistent temperature all night.

The problem

The 4am starts have been happening on and off for months. We'll go through a good patch and forget all about it and then something seems to trigger it and we end up in a week/s long loop of 4am starts. It is getting to the point that is affecting other areas of our lives now.

Unfortunately, we have fallen into the habit of getting her up at 4am (and she seemingly won't be soothed back to sleep), giving her some milk and putting the TV on.

I'm aware this is probably reinforcing the problem but I'm not sure what else to do because we can't sit in a dark room for 2 hours with a crying baby without going slightly mad.

I'd be so grateful for any thoughts or ideas.

Unfortunately it does become a habitual waking and to break it is to reinforce it's sleep time, which means going in and out of their room keeping them calm until an appropriate wake time. We had to do this with my 12 month old the other week who wanted to wake at 4am due to overtiredness (he'd napped awfully the day before).

I'm not joking when I say from 4-6am I was in and out of his room trying to calm him and get him to settle. He didn't settle, neither of us went back to sleep but I wouldn't get him out of his cot/room until 6am. I also did only go back in if he was very upset, by moaning etc. he was left.

Can you give them a soft/cuddly toy to have in the cot if they are awake and won't sleep? with the goal being to keep them in the cot until a more appropriate get up time?

It's a tricky one though because while I do agree with you in principle, she is in every other way a really good sleeper and she genuinely does not seem tired at 4am. And if that's the case, just leaving her or attempting to stay in her room for two hours sounds like a potentially pointless and very upsetting start to the day all around. What I'm getting at is, if she were genuinely tired at 4am, I wouldn't expect her to have a problem putting herself back to sleep.

I am wondering if perhaps she is just at the lower end of the sleep need spectrum and she's (previously) been having too much day sleep and is thus waking up at 4am genuinely ready to start her day. As an example, today she then made it until 10am before her first nap and wasn't tired/grumpy beforehand.

Yes maybe lower sleep needs then. Maybe try and gradually move the time you get her out of the cot from 4am in 15 mins increment, even if she's awake? So wakes at 4am but don't get her up until 4:15 to start with etc. And treat that as start of day and move nap back accordingly to then try and get to one nap and a better wake time.

Gradually move that morning nap later and later (and shorter) so that it merges with the lunch time one.

That morning nap is a similar type of sleep to night time sleep clothes got into the habit of waking early as she will get another sleep in a few hours. In theory if she can have a 5 hour wake window before her first nap then if you're aiming for her to wake at say 7am, her first nap should be at 12pm (5 hours later). Adjust the nap to that and the early wakings should eventually disappear. It will be painful for a few weeks while you stretch that nap out and it will take a while to even out but stick with it x

@mewkins ok that does make sense. I think maybe if I think it'll solve things I can try and commit to one nap a day. 4am is just way way way too early to be starting the day!

Try huckleberry app. If you subscribe for sleep analysis option, provide a few days of sleep logs and describe your problem, you can get a sleep plan written by their staff for your child. Helped me a lot.

It’s the classic age to be transitioning to 1 nap so I suspect that’s your problem. I’d do as @mewkins suggests and gradually merge it with the lunchtime one.

Yes it's a tricky transition but it will be worth it when you can start the day at a more reasonable hour. The effects won't be immediate you should start to notice a difference. Good luck!

It’s absolutely the 2 naps. Both of mine did exactly this at this age. Cut that first nap down to 10-20 mins and bring the second nap to 12:30. When the morning start hopefully gets later and as she gets older and can tolerate more awake time, drop the morning nap completely.

I have to say, if they are sleeping though, that wake up might only become 5 or 5:30am with a 7pm bedtime. Both of mine didn’t sleep past 6am until they had fully dropped all naps. But it’s better than 4am!

I agree it's the naps. Pushing towards consolidation might take a few weeks to work, but it will in the end!
Mine moved to 2 naps at 15 months (and learned to walk on the same day!) And the only reason the transition was smooth and easy was that she was ill for a few weeks beforehand and therefore needed her two naps for a bit longer!