4am the evil hour

[damadilemma]

DD is 8 months and has just finally started sleeping through - it took cc and all sorts of horrors. She's always been an early riser but so was/is her brother and having won the battle of the night wakings (10 months earlier than we did with DS...) I'm prepared to suffer 5am mornings for a while. But the last 2 nights she's been waking at 4am too tired to start the day but she can't go back to sleep though she lies down and tries. We've given her calpol in case its her teeth but no difference and by 5am I give in and get her up. She's not hungry because even when she gets up she doesn;t feed straight away and its often not been till nearly 6am. I also dream feed her at 9.30 or 10pm. She goes to sleep by herself fine at bedtime and naps so not a feeding/rocking to sleep issue (any more).

DH reckons letting her howl is the only way to break yet another bad habit. I can't bear it but is there any other way that doesn't take us back to square 1 with the night wakings? is it just a habit or could there be another reason that she can't go back to sleep? any ideas?

Is she cold? My dd has been going through this a bit and I put a vest on her last night. She still woke up at 3.30am but managed to re-settle herself - I think beacuase she was cosy.

What we do is not go to her immediately (leave her for a max of about 3 minutes) but if her cries aren't "I am tired and trying to sleep" cries, but become " I need you NOW cries" we go in - don't switch the lights on and gently lie her down and shush pat until she re-settles.

It can take a few nights to get her back into normal sleeping - and some nights can be hell, but it does eventually work.

My dd is all out of sorts after a nasty tummy bug so we think that has cause all the night wakings.

Hope you get it sorted.

Agree with the cold thing. Have taken to 'double bagging' my ds which I think has helped. (He wwas doing the same thing)

Also, cut down on his naps radically recently and this changed things around amazingly well. It took 5 days for the early waking to stop. Missing the extra time to do things in the day though!!

thanks meep. We've actually recently moved to a very hot country, so pretty sure she is not cold! Thought she may be hot so turned up the air conditioning but that didn't help. and tried giving her water too. The thing with shush pat with her is that she just gets more and more annoyed that we're not picking her up so she actually seems to settle quicker if we don't let her know we are there. but that means bearing a load of crying.

yes we leave her about 5 minutes to see if she'll go off herself. She tends to cry a bit on and off for the first half hour, so we mostly leave her, but then by 4.30 is yelling the place down. so we give her calpol that involves picking her and then she gets even more furious when we put her down again.
ah well, maybe will try and convince DH to try shush pat again. thanks anyway! hope your DD is feeling better.

sorry june, cross posting. oh no is it that cold already in the UK! mind you, grass is always greener, I'd love a bit of cold drizzle at the moment...
DD only naps about 2 - 3 hours in the day which must be about right for her age, don't you think?