17MO waking earlier and earlier.....please help

[TettyLouBar]

Hi all,

DD has mostly slept through since being approx a year old. She has her moments (teething, colds etc) when she has bad patches and the occasional waking if she cant find her dummy, but on the whole, shes been a good little sleeper so far.

However, in the last 6-8 weeks shes beginning to wake earlier and earlier. She used to wake around 7am (bliss), then suddenly she started to stir at 06:30 for a few weeks and we put it down to getting older and probably needing less sleep in the day (she was having nearly 2.5 hours at that point some days) so we never let her sleep past 2 hours, most of the time she'll stir at around 1.5 hours at nap times but now she's waking at 5am! I cant see how cutting her nap any more will help as she's so sleepy when she does wake and its her only nap of the day (she goes down around 11:30/12pm)

She was having Goodnight milk which seemed to be one of the things we started to do that coincided with when she started to sleep through. (Not sure how much it helped) but recently the only change I can think of that Ive made is that Ive started slowly reducing the number of ounces of goodnight milk in the bed time bottle and replacing it with cows milk. I'm going to try a full bottle of goodnight milk tonight in the vain hope she might stir at around 6-7am but I dont hold much hope.

Any suggestions welcome.
I'm at my wits end, I feel awful for saying this but I sometimes start resenting her when I have to get up with her at 5am and cant resettle her. She's running around the lounge laughing and playing and I'm scowling and just really angry. I'm scared that I might lose my temper or something.

So awful. DS1 woke at 5 - 5:30am everyday from birth to 2 years. It was plain awful. At least in your case, it's likely a phase. Supposedly, the best thing to do to discourage this (according to a few sleep books - you can imagine I've read my share!) is to make sure she is OK (ie not sick or teething) then remind her it's still nighttime and leave her there until morning (whatever time you decide that should be. She's at the age where she will start to resist sleep to be with you. The other point I would make is, I would avoid limiting her daytime sleep since sleep deprivation paradoxically leads to early rising. Along these lines, keep her bedtime nice and early. If she naps only once per day for 2 hours, it's a long day at that age - so I'd get her in her cot no later than 7:30pm, maybe earlier until she's back to sleeping in the mornings. Hope this helps. Hang in there!

Thanks TS,
I did have a good result after giving her more milk for bed but not sure whether it was just a coincidence. Will make sure she's not too cold, uncomfortable, teething, sick etc and keep doing what I'm doing.
For now I'm just going to get plenty of early nights and keep my fingers crossed.