BabyWhispererForums.com
SLEEP => Sleeping For Toddlers => Topic started by: J&Jsmom on November 05, 2005, 18:19:40 pm
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Please help because I am about to lose my mind. My DS is 20 months old and for several months now he has been waking up at 5am, sometimes 5.30 and occassionally at 6am. Freakishly he will suddenly have a day where he wakes at 7am but these are VERY rare.
But for the last few weeks he has consistently been waking up at 5.05am exactly. We leave him in his cot (in the vain hope that he'll go back to sleep) and he usually plays happily by himself for about 45 mins but gets increasingly irritated until he starts to yell. I can't tell you how much it sucks to be up before Cbeebies even starts :shock:
With a 7 week old who has several night time wakings, these early morning starts are now killing me. And I just don't know what to do to get rid of them.
Here's his normal routine:
Wake at 5am
Is irritable as hell by 12 when he has lunch and then goes down for about a 2 hour nap. Now sometimes he sleeps for less (like at nursery he can have as little as 30 mins, and sometimes he can sleep for about 2.5 hours). Sometimes he can't stay awake till lunch so he has a morning nap before lunch of about the same length.
He then has supper at around 5.30, about an hour of TV and then bath and in bed by 7pm. Recently he has been talking to himself for about 20 mins before falling asleep.
Now this last week I've been monitoring his sleep to see whether his length of naps and the time he goes to bed has any baring on what time he wakes up. The only day he woke up later (6.30am) was when he only had a 30 min nap the day before. But if I cut his nap right back to only 30 mins a day, he is soooooooo grizzly and has even more tantrums than normal.
Letting him go to bed later doesn't seem to make a difference. That said, we kept him up an hour later on the night the clocks went back and he woke up at 5am again - but in effect he did sleep an hour later or else he would have woke up at 4am :shock: So maybe keeping him up an extra hour would do the trick - but I can't stand the thought of having him up till 8pm. I am so desperate for 7pm to come just so that I can have a rest. And even so, even if I give up that extra hour of me time in the evening, it would still mean he wakes at 6am - which is still too darn early!!!!
I don't know what to do. He has recently started having more stuffed animals in bed with him - because he asks for them - but we're wondering whether they act as too much of a stimulus for him when he wakes up in the morning. Then again, if we take them out and he wakes up early, he'll have nothing to play with and will probably not sit happily for 45 mins.
I try to make sure he gets lots of fresh air and exercise late in the day to tire him out - but that seems to have little impact.
Any ideas??????????? Please help. I am desperate. :?
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Believe it or not, putting him to be earlier may help.
I know with Henry if he has a short nap day and I put him to bed even 15 minutes early, he'll sleep later the next day. On days when he goes to bed later, he actually gets up earlier.
Maybe try a bedtime of 6:45 or 6:30 and see if that helps at all.
Good luck!
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Hi Sarah
Thanks for your suggestion - but sadly we've tried that :( Not deliberately to make him sleep later, but because he just needs to go to bed early. For example, yesterday he only had 45 mins of nap so he went to bed at 6pm because he was soooo tired....and he still woke at 5am. Now maybe a whole hour earlier was too much but we couldn't keep him awake any longer. But I do vary his bedtime based on how long his nap was during the day because he just becomes a devil when he's overtired.
:? Thanks for the idea though
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hi melissa,
just a thought but does his room get light in the mornings? we had the same problem with DD then i brought some black out blinds for her room to stop any light getting in and she started to sleep till 7am.
HTH :D
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Hi Poppy
Thanks for your reply. It might get marginally lighter - but he has blackout blinds that keep most of the light out and I would say that it is still darker in the morning than it is in his room during the day - and he sleeps fine during the day.
Also, as we approached the turning back of the clocks, mornings were getting darker and darker, with it only really getting light at around 7am. This has changed a bit now that the clocks have gone back, but he was waking early before the clocks went back - so I don't think that light coming in was the cause. Perhaps I need to go into his room one morning at the exact time he wakes up to see what the conditions in his room are like??
Does anyone know how many hours of sleep they are supposed to have in every 24 hours at this age?
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13.75 hours per day is the average but Henry never even got close to that until recently.
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Thanks Sarah - I would then that Josh is getting slightly less than the average as he goes from 7pm till 5am - which is 10 hours and then he usually has about a 2 hour nap every day - bringing it up to 12 hours. Sometimes he naps less, sometimes more. So that tells me I shouldn't be cutting down on his nap time otherwise he'd be even further below the average. Am so darn confused. I wish these kids came with instructions. :roll:
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Hi Melissa
i would try a nap about 10.30-11am
lunch when he wakes
play time
nap about 2.30-3pm
bed by 6.30pm
Some babies (especially mine) find bathtime quite stimulating,so morning or afternoon bath can help.
Also have you tried wake to sleep.
sounds a bit of a nightmare.I was sceptical at first.I used to change Emily's nappy about 4am which roused her for a while ( first 3-4 nights were nightmare to get her back to sleep),then she just got used to it and wakes up later.Admittedly she normally wakes uo about 6.30am,but she gets a good 12 hours in.
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My suggestion would be 1) no tv at 5:30.....cut that out. I used to do the same with my daughter, but I realized it was overstimulating her WAAAYYY too much. So now we do Sesame Street at 4-5 while I cook dinner and after that there is to be no tv.....
2) put him to bed earlier. When you said you tried that, for how long did you try? I say for a good two weeks put him to bed at 6:30 and see how that works.
3) Earlier nap time. If he's up at 5, then I'd try a 11:00 nap and do lunch afterwards. Give him a snack at 10:30 to hold him over until lunch.
Good luck. Keep us posted.
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We dealt with early wakings for a looong time too! Myles is now 23 months, and has just started sleeping in everyday until at least 6-6:30, which is a huge improvement over 4:30-5am! I really don't know if he just grew out of it, or if it is because we changed his bedtime routine. We had been having a cuddle and watching a video in my room, then bath, into his room for his pj's, and then into his crib. Myles loves his bath, and I was finding that his bath was really giving him a second wind, and that once he was in his crib he would bounce around for a good 20-30 min. before he was quiet. So I switched it, and now he has his bath, bring him into his room and get his pj's on, and then into my room where we watch a 30 minute Baby Einstein video, and then into bed once it is done. I think the video really unwinds him and relaxes him, because we now don't hear a peep out of him once he is in his crib.
I know some people find that tv/videos are too overstimulating for their lo's, but this seems to work well for us!
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Thanks for all the suggestions. As luck would have it, this morning he slept till 6 - an hour later than usual. Not sure what caused it - we took all the fluffy toys out of his cot except one - so that might be it. But my DH also took him for a loooong walk in the woods in the very late afternoon. I think when he has intense physical activity in the outdoors it does make him sleep better.
So I've now ordered an all-terrain buggy that can take both Josh and Jamie and then I can take them both out late in the day. Josh can walk until he gets tired and then we can use the buggy. In the past I haven't wanted to try this because if he got too tired, there was no way I could manage both without a double pushchair.
I agree that TV before his bath and bed might be overstimulating him - but it doesn't really seem to have any impact on him falling asleep - and could it really have an effect on the next morning? The reason I am loathe to give it up is that it's the only way I can put my 7 week old to bed and keep Josh occupied.
I'll try bringing his bedtime forward for about a week and see if it makes a difference. I tend to adapt his bedtime and his naptime depending on how much sleep he's had in the day and what time he woke up. I am reluctant to change his bathtime as this has been part of his routine since birth and it seems like a massive change. But if nothing else works, I'll give it a try.
Anyway, must run as they're both waking up from their naps now. Will keep you posted on how we get on. Thanks for all the help
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I agree that TV before his bath and bed might be overstimulating him - but it doesn't really seem to have any impact on him falling asleep - and could it really have an effect on the next morning? The reason I am loathe to give it up is that it's the only way I can put my 7 week old to bed and keep Josh occupied.
With my daughter, it was the same way. She was going to bed great but then waking early. As soon as I moved up the tv time, she slept later. It was very strange and it very well could be just coincidence, but I thought I'd throw it out there......maybe you can just cut it down just to get the 7 week old to bed and then turn it off?
Great that he slept until 6 this morning :)