any tips for 10 month old early riser - 4.45am this morning and she needs more sleep.

[waitinggirl]

dd is 10 months old and is breastfed as well as her having some good meals during the day. she now goes to sleep easily and stays asleep for most of the night (we had to resort to cc for this and traumatic as it was, it really did work). however, she has recently (and now exacerbated by the time change) started to wake earlier and earlier. she needs more sleep - if taken downstairs and left to play, she will need a nap about an hour after waking.

dd is asleep at 7.30pm and is now waking at 4.45am. i am convinced her natural wake up time should be sometime berween 6 and 6.30 as that was roughly when she woke before this new phase settled in. we have tried to wait for her to re-settle herself, but it simply doens't happen. if i bf her she will sometimes go back to sleep, but sometimes not.

any advice?
many thanks

bump

My DD is 7mo so I don't have any experience to offer you, but my suggestion is putting her to bed a bit earlier. I have this book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, lets call it my bible , and it suggests the most common cause of early waking is a too-late bedtime which causes overtiredness. It suggests a temporary bedtime around 5.30/6pm until the early wakeups improve. I am trying this with my LO, putting her to bed at 6.30, as she has been early waking. This morning she did sleep til 6.30 (although she was unsettled in the night so we'll see if it works tonight!)

Waitinggirl - Dr Marc is my hero!!! That book literally changed my life. I didn't discover it until DS was around 6 months and now think it should be prescribed reading for any pg person! I certainly wish I'd read it when I was pg instead of GF and her "put the drowsy baby down to sleep in a darkened room" nonsense.

IslandIsla - I agree with Waitinggirl's suggestion to put your DD down a bit earlier. She could be overtired because she is now effectively going to bed a whole hour later with the clocks going back last weekend.

She is not waking up for the day at that time- she is waking up for some other reason- it is still night and she needs to sleep.

My advice would be to
a) ignore her and see if she goes back to sleep
b) if she doesn't go through, no lights, quick cuddle say it's still night time and she needs to sleep etc leave room

Well that's it really! If any of mine woke up before 6.30-7am they had no option other than to go back to sleep. We never switched lights on, took them out of room or allowed them to play.

A child of that age should need a minimum of 12 hours sleep in 24- but more likely to need 14-16 hours (12 hours at night and 1-2 naps in the day of 1-2 hours each)

Just re read my post and thought it sounded rather harsh!

I just mean- it's up to you. Either you get her up for the day and averyone is knackered or you persist in going through and settling her until she goes back to sleep. She has probably just got into a habit of waking and it should only take a few days to get out of it again!

Hope that helps!

The only advice I found that worked for my DS was to not let them have an early nap. (although mine were about 16 months). The advice I looked up said that children who did this caught up on their 'nightime sleep' by having an early morning nap an hr or so after getting up. I kept my DS awake for longer until 11am ish and then he had a nap, it did work after a few days and he slept until later.

thanking the 4 of you for some really good advice. we have ignored her to see if she will go to sleep. we lasted 45 mins and she still didn't go to sleep. will try the earlier bedtime and may pay dr marc a library visit (cannot buy any more sleep books or i think i will explode).

she did wake this morning at 5.55, a veritable lie in!

thanking you all

Try the later AM nap too. This really works for us, though we sometimes still get the early AM wake up call. To extend the morning awake time, I do anything to keep him up but low key...snack, walk around the house in the sling, extra stories, etc. I aim to have the first nap no sooner than 3.5 or 4 hours after waking.

lol, glad someone's else hero is Dr Marc too!!!! I have pretty much every childcare/sleep book (GF, baby whisperer, NCSS.....) but Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child is the best, it got me through those early months when i did just not understand DDs sleep. All the other books I would throw out quite happily.