Khyan is waking way too early - pls help !

[Khyan & Sahria's mum]

Ok so we have a little problem with early wakings  :? Khyan likes to start his day between 4.30 and 5.30am  :shock: this is now driving me CRAZY !

For the past month or so he has been sleeping thru the night which is wonderful but he wakes really early which is not so great

A couple of notes:

 :arrow: We still have foil on his window - so it's not the sun
 :arrow: We have introduced a fan in his room in the past 10 days hoping that it would knock out some of the noise that could be waking him
 :arrow: He needs me to sit with him when he goes to sleep and sometimes I need to put my hand in the cot and on his bottom or he even holds my hand some nights - 2 weeks ago it was taking him 5 min to fall asleep and now it takes sometimes 45 mins
 :arrow: When he wakes in the morning he is happy and starts calling out daadaa or maamaa
 :arrow: He doesn't sleep more than 10 hours at night
 :arrow: He goes to bed at 7.30pm and up until the last 3 days has napped at 11.30am for usually 1.5 - 2 hours although in the last few days I have been trying to stretch him to 12.30pm for his nap

I have in the last week had 1 good morning where he woke at 6.30am but that was on a day where he went to bed at 8.30pm due to a short morning nap and then a late longer nap.

I am trying to decide whether we should start walk in/walk out as maybe it's an issue of not being able to relax enough alone to put himself back to sleep in the morning.

But my worry is that he was a horrible sleeper up until 1 month ago so am I messing with something that is working well now ? after all he is sleeping thru at the moment am I going to mess things up if I go in and fiddle with the situation ?

should I just accept that he is an early riser and hope that maybe with age he will just learn to sleep in or should I tackle this problem now ?

[Carmela's Mom]

What worked for me might not work for you.  We started stretching Carmela's nap to 12:45 and then putting her in to bed at 7:30 versus 6:30/7.  It worked as she started sleeping until 7ish!

[imsmum]

I agree with Carmela's mom that the later nap time should do it. But with us we actually had to move bed time earlier first to get dd sufficiently rested that we could push the nap back.   Once you start pushing the nap back your bedtime will start moving back to i's normal time.  It does sound like you ds is a little overtired at night if it's taking him longer to settle.  good luck!

[elfin]

Hi Michaela,

We have also struggled on and off with the early wakings.  I find that putting him to bed earlier, even by 15 min., can sometimes make a big difference.  I have also found that by not leaving his room when he wakes this early helps to not reinforce it as well.  So when he wakes I would go in and tell him it's night-night time.  He would usually want me to pick him up which was fine, but everytime he asked to go downstairs, or that he wanted milk, or that he wanted Daddy, I would just keep saying no and that it is night-night time.  He would cry and carry on, but I was right there with him, and once he calmed down I would put him back down.  Some mornings he would go back to sleep, and other times he would be quiet for 20-30 minutes or so and then start back up again, and if he did I would go back in and do it all over again.  Within a couple days he was back on track.

Hope this helps a bit, and remember you are not alone!