2yr old has started waking up between 4 and 5 am every day

[hend200506]

ellie has always been a good sleeper since the age of 3 months but for some reason the last 3 weeks she has woken up at between the hrs of 4 and 5am every day i am at the end of my tetner with it as she never goes back to sleep so i have to get up with her and she seems to be full of energy,, she goes to bed no problem at around 7pm and we dont here a peep out of her till 4ish, she sleeps in a cot bed so she is able to get out i hace tried alsorts to get her to sleep longer so if anyone else has had this problem or can suggest anything , i will try anything to get a full nights sleep for myself let alone for her.

I'm sorry to say that it is probably just her body clock resetting itself, have you tried putti9ng her to bed a bit later. I did this and when my ds aged 2 slept in til 6am for example after a few weeks of early waking, I'd bring his bedtime a bit closer back to 7pm. he's back to 7pm-630am now, you just have to play around with the times a bit to get them sleeping in. try putting her to bed at 730pm for a few nights and see if it makes a difference, if it does, put her to bed at 715 pm and see if she wakes up at the same time....does that make sense?

she went to bed at 8pm last night and woke at 4.30 this morning, it doesnt seem to matter what time she goes to bed

if she's having a nap during the day, you might try dropping it...

how do you try and settle her when she wakes?

I had this with my DS2. Our daily routine at the time meant we weren't able to avoid him having a nap (time in the car at the wrong time of day). Putting him to bed later did nothing, and left us with no "winding down" time as we had to go to bed at nine to deal with the early start.

It was a fucking nightmare, quite honestly, and at 3.4 we're only just recovering. So I would suggest you try anything you can to get her to go back to sleep. It may not be possible, however, in which case you just have to grit your teeth and struggle through.

People on here often talk about "wake to sleep" which means setting your alarm to wake a bit before the child does, rousing them and then re-settling them. We were beyond reason by the time we found out about this so didn't try it, but after only three weeks (sorry!) you could still manage to try this for a couple of weeks.

The other thing we do is lots and lots of physical and mental activity to wear him out. My DS1 has always been an early riser who doesn't need huge amount of sleep but my DS2 generally goes on slightly less than ten hours a day, topping up with a nap once or twice a week.

Good luck!

sometime she will have a nap but they are getting rare and as for settling her when she wakes it depends on how asleep i am as she is so wide awake sometimes i just get up and start the day as normal and on rare occasions she will get in to bed with us but i dont like her doing this incase it becomes habbit, maybe i should try the wake to sleep method as i am going to be awake anyway

I feel your pain - my DS is 2.1 and waking 5.30am every day. Doesn't matter what time he goes to sleep at night, always wakes between 5-6am. It's been like this for a month now. We've also tried wearing him out in the afternoon, making sure he eats a big meal, and we're now trying to reduce afternoon nap time.

I am going to spend the next week going to bed at 9pm myself. Then when I feel a bit less wretched I am going to try either wake-to-sleep or the extending sleep technique. At the moment thought I can't bear the thought of getting any less sleep, even if it meant things would improve in the long run.

i tried putting her to bed last night at 9,30 she woke this morning at 5.50 am which is a lot better than 4am will try that again tonight the only thing is we get no time to relax as after we put her to bed i am ready to go myself but i will carry on for a few days and see what happens as the thought of doing the wake to sleep terrifys me as knowing my luck i will go to stir her and she will shoot up thinking its play time

Good luck. If you want to change patterns you have to stick at for a couple of weeks. Ours always bounced incredibly quickly but it does work for some children.