Hi everyone,
We've struggled with early wakes for months with our now 13month old daughter, and are desperate for any advice.
My LO self settles consistently whenever she wakes in the night, and sleeps through from 7:30pm - 5:30am, which we would be happy with if she was well rested but that is definitely not the case. She is clearly still very tired when she wakes up in a very fussy, frustrated mood, usually crying for most of the first wake window. It makes for a very stressful morning all round! We try not to go into her straight away when she wakes, but she'll often cry from 5:30 (albeit usually not a proper tears cry), and will often keep putting her head back down in her cot but is not able to actually drift back off. Sometimes I sing through the monitor which can keep her happy until 6am, but she's still not got enough extra sleep from that.
She's at nursery 4 days a week where she has 1 nap for about an hour, so we don't think she's getting too much daytime sleep. When she's home the other 3 days a week, she has 2 naps- around 9:30am for 45mins and 2pm for about 1 hour 15mins. We're playing catch-up with sleep on non-nursery days. We previously put her down around 7pm which caused even earlier wakes, so then worked towards the 7:30pm bedtime. LO has blackout blinds and white noise on in her room. She has dinner about 6pm, and a bottle at bedtime, so don't think it's hunger waking her.
We've downloaded all the free early wakes guides online and there doesn't seem to be any obvious fix, but any advice would be welcome!