Controlled Crying in morning???? need advise

[mum2twins]

Hi
I've just been trolling through all the old messages about early wakings, but I have a quesiton which I am hoping someone maybe able to help on. My 20 month old daughter has been waking at 5-6am for a month. She wakes and instantly starts screaming whereas she always used to chat happily at 7.30am. Also she has cut down her nap from 2 hrs to 1 hour. I have all the blackouts etc (although not really needed at this time of year) But my question is is it reasonable to control cry her after she has been asleep since 7pm i.e. 10 hrs. She is tired still and its not like she is bouncing around full of the joys. What do you think and has anyone tried it or do they just cry until its time to get them up anyway.

This is exactly what we've been going through (see 15month old wakes up sobbing!). William has stopped doing this today. It is very upsetting and I don't know why it happens but fingers crossed, we've turned the corner. We tried controlled crying to start with (it worked very well for us at night in the earlier days) but we made no progress and just ended up with a hysterical baby who we had to comfort for ages to calm him down. He never went back to sleep. Sorry but hopefully she will stop and go 'back to normal' soon

m2t, could your daughter be over tired? In the past we have found that over tiredness leads to poor sleeping patterns. Is there some way you could try and increase your dd's nap time for one or two days, a very long car journey perhaps?
Somehow she seems to have got herself into a pattern she is not happy with and you need to change it.
I have nothing against controlled crying having used it myself but I think it probably won't work in this instance. It never seems to be as good for early mornings as for bedtime or middle of the night.
Good luck.

Occassionally dd2 - nearly 22 months - has had periods of waking at 5ish, crying - just odd days, rather than constantly. If her cry is a tired cry, I have left her to carry on and she has gone back to sleep, but a more insistent cry and I have got her up. I do agree with Bugsy that controlled crying generally doesn't work as well at that time, probably as it is so close to their normal wake up time.

I find that they do have spells of weeks or even a few months of early(what I call pre 6am!)waking, and that it suddenly stops.

Could dd be cold, or is she hearing the heating come on ?

Agree that I don't think controlled crying is going to work after 10hrs sleep tbh.

What about trying to make yourself as boring as possible until 7am? Maybe still keep all the curtains and lights off... only talk if necessary and then in low voices, no milk or breakfast until "daytime". Then at 7am switch on the lights/open the curtains put the radio on etc, be all chirpy and interactive (okay, hard to do when you've been awake since 5 I know!!). That way you're still letting her know that it's still nighttime and "boring" to be up.

Maybe (if you're happy with this - not all people are) bring her into your own bed at 5am and make it clear you're all now sleeping at this time and not be interactive (I do this occasionally with my ds and although neither of us get much more sleep he doesn't seem to increase his morning wakings as a result).

Will probably take a little while before you see any improvement though - and at that point it's hard to tell whether they just grew out of a phase or whether what you did worked!

Could she be waking hungry/thirsty? My DS also seems to wake at 5 ish demanding milk sometimes (he'll then go back to sleep again afterwards), and this usually seems to coincide with a growth spurt. Usually only lasts a few days, then he settles down again.

Try putting her to bed later to see if she will sleep later. Otherwise I have to be honest and say she must be getting enough sleep to be waking at that time and not wanting to go back off. My nephew has always woken at 6am since a young baby as he doesnt need as much sleep as his sister.

mum2twins I have to agree with Bugsy. I think that my dd definitely seems to sleep better when she isn't overtired. Sometimes the less sleep she has during the day the less she will have at night and over Christmas we thought we'd put her to bed a bit later so she could join in a bit more but she woke up earlier and more tired than usual. She is 16 months by the way.
If it's any consolation my dd has often gone through periods of waking before 6. We have had a rule since she was 4 months that we wont' get her up till 6 and that seems to work because we will give her a teether and her dummy or bunny and she'll go back to sleep without a problem or start playing / chatting. I think that sometimes it is a security thing, they just need to know you are there. As the others have suggested, when we deal with her before 6 we never 'interact' and do everything as quietly as possible and if possible don't speak to her.
It sounds like your dd is definitely still tired and I have experienced the same with my dd but am afraid don't really have the answer. I think that with my dd sometimes her teeth (she has had terrible problems with these, I know some babies don't at all) wake her and then she is miserable and grumpy but can't get back to sleep.

Sorry not to be of more help Good luck, hope it gets better soon x

Thanks everyone. She definately is overtired as she is still tired in the morning and nearly falls asleep at around 10am when shes got up at 5.30. She also threw her lunch around in anger as she was so tired - so I just picked her up and put her to bed. The problem is her twin brother who emulates her decided to copy her....aaaarggh! She then did her usual of waking after only 1hr nap and screamed. So I just told her to go back to sleep and she went mental - lobbing all her toys out of the cot onto the floor... Nevertheless I left her there for another hour doing controlled crying and then got her up when I would have done usually. Her twin DS looked a bit shocked as the bedlem had woken him early too. I've tried lying down with her in the dark but she just sticks her fingers up my nose in my ears etc and won't give in. So I'll see what time he wakes tomorrow and tell her she can play but its too early to get up.......oh the joy of motherhood!!!!

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mum2twins - I'm going through the same thing with my 17 month ds. He's never been a good sleeper - he usually wakes once or twice in the night and gets up at 6 am.
We decided to do controlled crying this week to tackle the night-time wakings - these are now still happening but are much shorter (about 30mins each now), but he's compensated by deciding it's time to get up at 4.30am.
Tried controlled crying - he just cried until 6am when I gave in and got him up.
Tried milk - but he wouldn't sleep afterwards
Tried putting in bed with me - just poked/hit me and crawled around.
Tried changing the time the heating switches on and double checked room temperature.
HELP! Any advice anyone???

• oh and he's obviously still tired, and is very grumpy. (I suppose it may be teeth pain but the reason that we haven't used c. crying until now is that we've used one excuse or another for his waking since he was 6 months old, now we've chosen to tackle it I really don't want to give in).

Bloss, when you did cc in the morning, how early was ds waking? and what was his usual wakeup time? Just interested as my ds is going through a stage of waking a bit early - not sure whether it is just waking earlier than I'd like, but appropriate for him, or whether he is really still tired and could do with more sleep. Thanks

How are his daytime naps? I was letting my son go back as early as 7.30 if he got up really early, but by putting his morning nap back to no earlier than 9am this seems to have helped him regulate his getting up time. He also has a 12.30 nap for up to two hours still. He only sleeps 11 hours at night so a 7.30 bedtime means a 6.30 wakeup most days, but we manage on that. In the summer it will be easier. My ds sometimes still just wakes up early which is awful but there you go.

There seems to be quite a lots of sleep problems going on now, after the Christmas period. Lots of tehm associated with Toddlers. I think mine just needs to get back into a routine again and the holidays have confused her. We are slowly getting there, and even reintroducing her nap (which she'd dropped Dec 20th!) This seems to be helping as well. Therefore all I can say is perserve, I can't offer advice though!

Yes, I think we've been unsettled by Christmas, and ds has been knocked for six by his return to nursery this week. I'm sure he wakes earlier when he's not napping properly (which he never does at nursery). I decided that we needed to try and get back into a better pattern - delaying the morning nap like you aloha, but I also thought I might try limiting the length of the morning nap to see if he'll sleep better at lunchtime and be less tired at night. Anyway, I left DH with strict instructions to get him up as soon as he heard the slightest cry this morning - and had a call this afternoon to report that ds had slept for 2.5 hours this morning without stirring!! Poor little guy is obviously completely pooped!
He's never been quite a 12 hour a night baby, but normally gets to 6.45 or so - lately its been just after 6 which is just tooo early (not just for me, I'm sure )

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bloss, thanks for your reponse, its helpful. I'm fairly sure ds needs to sleep a bit later, just not sure how we get there. I find it hard to wake him from his morning nap - seems very mean - but I think that might be the place to start.

Elliot, I walk in quietly, open the curtains and just sit by his cot calling his name quietly if I want to wake him up - it seems less cruel! I don't know how old your ds is but for me the main thing was to put him down no earlier than 9am (time of going down is more important for my ds than length of nap) let him sleep for up to 45 mins max, and then put him down in the afternoon and he sleeps for up to two hours. I suspect in a few more months we'll just have the afternoon nap though.

I use a similar method to Aloha to wake DS. Open curtains, put away his clean clothes (if he's close to waking just this can do it), sit by his cot and stroke his head/speak gently to him and as often as not he wakes with a big grin.

Well, I do try gentle waking methods but if he's out for the count, nothing but picking him up works - and gentle or not, he's one of those children who always wakes crying and takes a while to come round.
Aloha, ds is 13 months so just a couple of months younger than yours, I think. Sometimes I think he's starting to grow out of the mornign nap and other times he really needs it.
Yesterday I woke him after one hour's mornign sleep and today I had to wake him after 7am!! So perhaps we are getting somewhere. Though then of course he wasn't tired for his morning nap and hardly slept at all. I don't know, it still often feels like random variability, and the periodic days at nursery don't help.

DM2 are you sure your ds and my dd arent the same child. Sounds exactly the same ! My night wakings with dd though are normally a few minutes and then she's back off.

Thanks for the pep talk bloss. Just to update, after I posted last, ds's temperature soared and it became obvious he was ill (again). Tonsilitus (? Spelling) this time, so the cuddles came back and the controlled crying was put onto a back burner.
The good news is that now (4 days later) he's feeling better and last night slept from 7.30 to 5am in one go (with only minor whinging at bedtime). Going to try moving bedtime a little later tonight!