14 Month old waking at 4am! Help!

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I’m really scratching my head over DS’s sleep. He has a 7pm bedtime and does one nap of around 2hrs 12-2pm ish. Or a micro-nap of max 15 mins at 8am if he can’t handle it. I never let him sleep later than 2.30pm. He sleeps solidly from 7pm until 3.45am when all bets are off.

The latest he sleeps is 5am, but more often it’s 4am and he will not got back to sleep. We don’t start the day with him until at least 5am, (keep it dark, try to resettle) but he can get loud and we have a toddler trying to sleep next door. He’s slightly better when we’re not in the bedroom (we hide downstairs and sleep on a blow up mattress), but not by much.

It’s driving us mad! I don’t really want him to go down later at night as I really value my evenings with DH, and it makes sense for him to have the same bedtime as DD. Do I just have to wait it out? At this rate they will never be able to share a bedroom because they’re so incompatible in terms of sleep. DD is fab and gets very annoyed if she doesn’t get the sleep she needs. She’s been complaining about him waking her from our room 😢🫩

Any ideas?

Could he be cold? Is he in a sleeping bag?
if not cold maybe cut nap down by 15 mins or try slightly earlier bedtime (my kids all teens now but I was obsessed with sleep when they were babies!)

There is a really good group on Facebook called 'The Beyond Sleep Training Project'
they're not a sleep training group and they promote an approach called Possums. If you put your routine there, you'll get some great advice.
I think your little one is having too much day time sleep. 7pm-4am is 9 hours and a 2 hour nap takes it to 11 hours sleep in total.
I had to slowly reduce my sons nap to help him sleep better at night

How long has these been going on for? Whenever this has happened for me it’s either been teething or a drop in sleep needs.
If it’s teething you just have to wait it out. If it’s a drop in sleep needs I would try cutting the nap to 1hr 30 for a week and see if it balances out.
The “average” toddler does 10 hour nights at this age so if you want the 7pm bedtime you may have to tolerate the 5am wake up. I know it’s tough, mine sleeps 8.30-6.30 so we have a very short evening and not much of a lie in 😂

Mine has gone back and forth through phases like this. How long has this been happening? And what is ideal wake up time?
What I found helped was cutting out any and all night feeds and then cutting down day sleep.
2 hrs is a pretty hefty nap so he is probably making up for part of his lack of overnight sleep with the afternoon nap. Try reducing it. And cut the micro completely. You’ll prob have to do it for at least a week before any noticeable change.

On the other hand, it could just be a phase you need to wait out. He might hit another growth spurt soon and need more sleep
at night.

I really do empathise: baby sleep is a minefield and there’s no way you can ever know for sure. But this is my twopence worth!

My 2yo has never slept more than 10hrs at night. If I put him to bed at 7pm, he would wake up at 5am so I put him to be at 8:30pm and he wakes up at 6:30am. Would I like more evening? Yes. Would I like to get up at 5am? No!

I would cap his nap to 1hr and put him to bed at 8pm and see how you get on.

I would reduce day time napping too. (And never do a morning nap). I would say he is outgrowing his nap. Limit to 1.5 hours and see where that gets you? Could also push bedtime to 7.30pm.

Btw my dd used to start waking earlier the few weeks leading to the clock changes.

Mine was on two maps then

It might be worth cutting the day time nap down slightly, but to be honest even with a 2 hour nap in the day I would still expect a child his age to be sleeping at least 7-6 so I don’t think your expectations are unrealistic. Anything from 11-14 hours sleep over 24 hours is considered normal though.
Does he seem happy/content when he wakes or does he still seem tired? Could he be too cold/warm? Is he hungry? Perhaps he needs a substantial supper or a bigger milk feed before bed. What about teething? Looking for his dummy?

I think it is really variable. My friend's dd stopped all naps on her 1st birthday. She has never needed much sleep and even as a teen she gets up at 5am 😬

It’s been about 6 weeks of 4-5am wake ups now. Before that he was up every few hours. He was demand-fed for various reasons but now he’s night-weaned which definitely helped.

I wish I had greater control over capping that one nap. I can do it on days he’s home, but he’s at nursery three days a week and they have a policy of not waking them up. I challenged this nonsense with my eldest and got nowhere. The other day they let him sleep 2hrs 40mins 😱 If he’s ill, fair enough, but otherwise I’m not happy about it. He absolutely needs a nap though. He’d be ragged without it. Micro naps only happen when he totally conks out in the pram because he’s been up since 4! I try not to let it happen at all and wake him almost immediately most of the time. I feel guilty because he’s obviously knackered but it’s a vicious cycle.

We make sure he’s full before bed but he does act like he’s ravenous for his weetabix first thing (loves the stuff and gets very impatient for it). He’s not actively teething at the moment but it’s obvious when he is, so I can’t say for sure it’s that. He doesn’t have a dummy, never has - wouldn’t entertain one for a second (boob purist)! He has recently mastered using a spoon very well and he’s just started walking so these leaps could be contributing. As you can tell, I’ve been trying to figure this out for while!!

Ideal wake up is 6am. I don’t want to put him to bed later (AT ALL 😂) so the only option I have is to cap the nap when he’s with us. I do wonder if he’s cold sometimes but he’s been in a long sleeved vest + onesie with a 2.5 tog bag. Our room is about 18 degrees through the night but maybe he does like it warmer? TBH I think he’s just ready to wake up. He stands up and shouts! And he sometimes does a poo after the wake up that we have to change 🫠

One of mine used to be in a nursery that wouldn’t wake them from naps. Once he slept for 3.5hrs! I couldn’t believe it 😂

I think you know if they are ready to get up, as you say, it sounds like he’s had enough sleep so if you don’t want to put him to bed later you might just have to deal with the early starts when you can’t cap his nap.

In my experience nothing related to temperature / clothing ever made any difference because it’s unlikely he’s uncomfortable if he’s sleeping straight through to 4am.

good luck 🤞

At the moment he's having 11 hours sleep which is at the lower end of the sleep needs scale but still within normal limits. He's waking up because he isn't tired.

I know you value your evenings, we all do, but even half an hour could be a big difference.

11 hours within 24 hours is at the low end of average but totally normal, your only options are cap nap (that is insane about your nursery not waking them, I've never heard of that), or later bedtime. We all like evenings but would you rather an evening or be up from 4am?? 7pm is too early when he's having that much day time sleep. Surely later bedtime gives you similar amount of evening anyway, as you can go to bed later if you can get him sleeping later in the morning. Mine is 16 months and we're having to cap her nap at 45 mins now (luckily nursery do whatever we as), bedtime at 7.30pm and she usually gets up between 6-6.30am. Longer naps means she won't go to bed or is awake for ages in the night. Maybe you can do later bedtime just on nursery days when he's had a longer nap, and earlier on home days when you cap the nap short. But I'd be seriously challenging their policy to not wake them, that must cause an issue for so many parents particularly at 18+ months so many kids I know need to have their nap capped to keep nights reasonable.

A miracle! 6am wake up, with a 6:30pm bedtime. We had guests and he was exhausted yesterday so I put him down early. I’d capped his nap at 1.5hrs. I also put the heating on for an hour when me and DH crawled to bed at about 9.30pm. No other changes so let’s see what tonight brings! 🫣 Hopefully the later start will enable a reset. 🤞