5AM WAKINGS

[wilkes]

Hi Guys

Hope you can help me out with any advise on how to stop my 2yr old waking up at a ridiculous time of the morning.  He has been waking up at this time on and off for months now, but recently it has become a real bug bear for my husband & I as we both work full time and getting rather burnt out.

Josh is at nursery full time and has a sleep in the afternoon for about 1hr -
1hr 20mins tops. Eats fine, plays ok and goes to bed in the evening ok too. What are we doing wrong?  here is his routine:-

5.00am awake
6.00am milk 5oz
8.00am breakfast (nursery)
12.00 lunch
12.30 sleep
2.00 Activity
3.30pm snacks
4.30pm leaves nursery
5.30pm dinner
6.30pm bath
7.00pm - bottle
7.15 / 7.30pm - sleep.

We have tried to cut out his day time nap which made things 10 times worse, so he is obviously not ready for that just yet.

Look forward to your comments.

[andibig]

I think he is probably overtired and this is causing the early waking.

A couple of things i would try is firstly ask the nursery if its possible to bring his nap forward.if not then at the weekends i'd put him down for a nap at around 11-11.30 as he is having a very long awake time from when he first woke up.
I'd also bring his bedtime forward a little earlier say around 6.30 so you'll have to do some re-jiggiing of the evening routine.basically by giving him an earlier bedtime its giving him the chance to catch up on sleep.

Also when he wakes at 5am what do you do?is he happy to stay in his room?
HTH

[Layla]

I totally agree with Andrea... try to bump up the start of the nap & bedtime for at least 3-4 days to let him catch up. If they are unable to do that at nursery... still try an earlier bedtime as if he's only sleeping for 1hr then he is awake for 7hrs before bedtime & thats a fairly long stretch for his age... I would do 6.30 the latest too!