21 month old used to sleep until 7.30 now gets up at 5. help!!

[pinkdaisy]

My 21 month old used to be such a good sleeper, but now he keeps waking at 5-5.30am. It's driving me nuts and am shattered all day!
He has black out blinds, so I know it's not that, but I can't work out why he keeps waking up. Any ideas how to get him out of it?!
Help Lisa x

All I can say is my DS did exactly the same a few months ago, the only solution was putting him to bed later, although it does mean our evenings are shorter but at least you haven't been up for hours before the rest of the world. If he has a daytime nap you could cut that down, but I felt I needed his naptime for catching up with things in the day so went with the bedtime idea

Hope things improve, 5 is not a happy time to be told its morning!

Unless the black out blind makes it pitch black that could still be the cause. Ds1 is doing it at the moment and so is one of his friends. His mum just reminded me (when I was ranting about it to her) that they both did it this time last year too.

We are having some success with returning him to his room saying 'it's not time to get up yet' repeat ad nauseum for the next 2 hours , it's frustrating but today he stirred at 5 then went back to sleep till 6.45. Would've been bliss except ds2 (4 months) decided he was going to wake at 5 instead and bounce around his cot for an hour so I still didn't get any sleep. Arrgh. Can't blardy win.

sorry but we have the same problem here! Occasionally we can get him back to sleep but more often than not we start the day at 5.45 or thereabouts.

I think the problem is even if they have blackouts they can see light around the window and hear the birds singing etc. It's just nature that the world starts a lot earlier in summer and unfortunately little babies respond to the natural order of things gaaaah.

Anyway much sympathies and if anyone has a magic solution I would love to hear it...

It's either a phase or related to naps. He might be starting to need less sleep in the day.

I think it's more likely to be a phase that he'll come out of. If you normally expect him to wake at 7/7.30, then 5.30 is the time he will normally come into a lighter sleep then drops back off. It seems as if he's got into the habit of fully waking at this point. So I think you could try shorter naps,/more exercise, something to make him sleep though again.

how much day sleep is he having? maybe you need to shorten it..

Ds2 is 22 months and did the 5am waking for a bit. l think cutting the 3 hour 12-3pm nap down to 2 hours helped- although sometimes he just needs it and i hate waking sleeping babies as a general principle!

Also, perhaps you could push bedtime a bit later. My ds tends to sleep about 11 hours a night so i know if i put him down at 7.30pm he will tinker around his cot for a bit, maybe falling asleep at 8pm and then therefore sleep til 7am. By the same token if he's asleep at 7pm then he's prob gonna wake at 6am.

Or, is he hungry?? Ds2's best friend went through this and he was waking up real hungry around 5am and eating a tremendous breakfast, so maybe make sure he has a filling dinner. it worked for her..

Hope this helps!