22 month old - 5:30am wake up

[CandiCands]

Hi,

I just joined this site and hope I can get some useful tips from you all, as I'm sure I'm not the first mum to experience this.

My son is 22 months. We moved him into a big boy's bed at 21 months. I am pregnant and expecting in December, so wanted to get DS settled into a bed routine so we could use the cot.

He has one nap during the day at midday for 1,5 to 2 hours. He goes down well at 7pm and doesn't wake up during the night. The problem is, since moving into the big bed, he wakes up at 5:30am on the dot, every day! He wakes, gets out of bed and creeps into ours, asking for a bottle. (When he slept in his cot, he would wake around 6:30am).

I would really like to sort this 5:30am wake up call out asap and have no idea how to tackle it! Once he is awake, he is awake. Plus, I would really like him to stay in his room until atleast 6/6:15am. The only idea I have is to have a stair gate at his door, but I know this will just get him very upset ad he will continute to cry until I get up and 'let him out'.

Are there any better ideas/solutions out there please? I would be most grateful for any help.

Thanks in advance x

you could use a stair gate on his room keep cup of water next to his bed so he has a drink to be honest some children the older they get are just early risers my ds has always woke at 5 am im used to it now the other thing cut his nap back in the day so more tired when he goes to bed and may sleep heavier and longer

make sure room is blackened as mornings are so light also not near window as birds may be singing and waking him up at that time

apart from that i have no ideas lol as none worked for my ds im just used to the fact his an early riser its still 10 half hours sleep so may well have had enough by then maybe move bedtime to 7.30 see if that helps also

welcome to mn by the way its very useful lol

Try this here

Read the whole thread if you can, it will inspire you to keep at it.
I haven't looked back!

Thanks so much for the suggestions. Cutting back his naps makes no difference as I cut it back to 1 hour, but found he woke up earlier due to being overtired. I have tried the later to bed, but no difference either.

We have blackout blinds. I'll try the bottle of water as he may be thirsty. He has only been doing this for the past month, surely I can fix it?!

Will read the thread, thank you.

DS is 20mo and often wakes at 5 or 6am, usually water gets him back to sleep (or rearranging his menagerie of stuffed animals) so yes, cup/bottle of water would be my suggestion too.

Have you tried moving his nap earlier? DS often goes down as early as 10am. tbh, anything that can shift his routing slightly might be helpful

Candi, no tips to add, but i share your pain. DD used to be a brilliant sleeper, we had months and months of 7pm-8.30am joyful sleep, with dd waking up in the morning laughing and squealing with delight. Now we get sudden 4.30am wakeup calls signalled by loud offensive screaming, which really doesnt put a nice start on the day. If someone had told me a few years ago i would have considered 6am a lie in, i would have chortled and carried on drinking my vodka and coke thinking it would never happen to me. Il be watching this thread with interest, i already have 2 sleepytots so she can find her dummies, a velcro blackout blind is on its way to me, and after reading that thread im going to try that WTS thing that SOLO has had success with. If this works i will be seriously be grovelling with gratitude!!

Try the bunny alarm clock as mentioned on the other thread. It saved my life

My daughter used to wake up at 5am everyday for 6 months and i put her to bed at 7pm. She now goes at 8-8,30 and wakes 7.30-8am. Just start putting him to bed later if you dont mind the extra hour. It worked for me....My DD is a 10 hour sleeper, makes sense really, she gets up and plays with her toys or climbs into our bed and wakes us up if we arnt already up with DD2.

Can you leave a couple of beakers/bottles of milk/juice/water in his cot so they are there if he wakes up and he doesn't need to come in to you to ask for a drink?

Take him to choose a special wake up bag and fill it with some favourite toys and books that he can play with in the morning if he is up before everybody else.

Do you think the chinks of light that come through around the edges of blackout blinds could be waking him up? If so line some curtains with blackout material aswell and use in addition to the blinds.

Instead of a bunny clock you could just use a night light plugged into a timer switch. Have it on when he goes to bed and set it go off for anytime after you want him to get up. If he wakes up before the light has gone off he has to stay in bed.

Honestly, I had 19mos of up an awful lot with Dd. I thought it would never end, but the WTS method gave me my sanity back(well almost), but you really do have to go the full week with it or it will likely fail which happened to me the first time, so I did it again for the week, et voila!!!