Early Waking and Short Naps - help!

[palace]

Hi all,

I'm having a few challenges with Louise's (7 months, 3 weeks old) sleep at the moment and am hoping someone can give me some advice. We've been on the EASY routine for a few months now and she is really happy and chilled out but for the last month has woken literally EVERY morning at between 4 and 5am. Most days its almost exactly at 5am and I could set my clock by her. I've read about babies waking out of habit and I think that's what she's doing but I have absolutely no idea how to break the habit. Her routine is now:

5am - wake (I leave her until she cries, she often gurgles and chats for ages). I've tried shh/pat and pu/pd to get her back off but she stops crying and starts chatting and giggling and seems to have no intention of going back to sleep.  She's lovely and cheeky and I have to hide my smiles when she's like that, but the little madam is giving me even more grey hair!
5.30am ish - breastfeed, both boobs
7am - nap, 45 mins or so
8am - breakfast (cereal) plus a few sips of water
10am - nap, 20 to 40 mins maximum
11am - bottle, takes about 7 to 8oz
12.30pm - lunch - something savoury and something sweet plus water
2pm - nap, 1 hour maximum
3pm - bottle, takes between 2 to 6oz
4.30pm - dinner, same as lunch
5pm - nap, hardly ever goes to sleep and if she does for 20 mins maximum, otherwise she just screams the house down
6pm - bath
6.30pm - breastfeed, both boobs
7pm - bed - sleeps through for 10 hours straight without a dreamfeed and hardly ever wakes up. If she does wake up she goes back off really quickly with a quick shh/pat

Am I just cursed with an early riser? Her mood is great and she hardly ever cries unless her teeth hurt or she gets left on her own. I know I'm lucky to get 10 clear hours a night, but I'd kill to be allowed to sleep until 7am! I've read that babies of this age need to sleep for 12 hours at night plus 4 to 6 hours during the day so does that mean Louise isn't getting enough sleep? Would being overtired make her wake early and not nap well? Is it possible to get her back into the old routine of 12 hours sleep at night plus 3 good naps a day or am I living in cloud cuckoo land?

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance if you reply!

[aimeeL]

Our LOs are very close to the same age and we've been going through a similar thing...  So not a huge amount of experience on you here, but I'm sure someone else with more will pop by soon...

You're wanting to start your day at 7 a.m., right?  If so, I'd keep trying to do a regular 1st nap time instead of letting her nap AT 7 a.m.... does that makes sense?  I got that advice recently and it's helped me tons as far as just having a game plan.  Basically, you don't want them to get used to being able to make up the night time sleep right away... Will she not go back down after eating at 5:30 a.m.?  Because I think the 7 a.m. nap is throwing you off... if you can push her a bit more, it might help?  What do you think?  I'm thinking the 20-40 min 10 a.m. nap is because of UT from having the previous nap... does that make sense?

I also wonder if the EWs started because of too MUCH sleep in the day time.  Maybe start transitioning away from the CN?  I think you might be looking for TWO good naps at this age... My LO was doing the same thing about 3-4 wks ago... started fighting the CN, so we have been moving away from it.  Must say it's gotten a bit ugly at times, though - so be forewarned!  But it DID help the EWs when she started getting more A time! - was able to stop looking for it at 5 a.m., I guess!

This is what my LO's IDEAL day looks like:
E/A - 7:15 a.m. (wakeup)
S:  10 a.m.

E/A:  12:00 p.m.
S:  2:45 p.m.

E/A:  4:15 p.m.
S:  7:15 p.m.

Doesn't happen lots - but that's what we aim for..

Anyways - obviously, all LOs are different... but hope that helps!

[home alone]

can i jump in?
dd is doing the same thing too.  we are also struggling with multiple NW.

aimee, how long did it take to stretch the 1st nap time to 10am?
do i stretch the A time over few days? 
i assume first few days LO will be too tired and take short naps no?


dd has been consistently a terrible napper and i just thought things will work itself out cos dd1 was a great sleeper from 4mths.  I can't believe i am still sleep deprived!
sorry about the rant.
monica

[aimeeL]

TBH, I'm not terribly good at being methodical and patient... so we more just sort of wing it based on when she woke up... I mean, I still aim for 10 a.m., but watch her carefully... if she's already showing lots of sleepy signs - like this am - I'll put her down at 9:40, 9:50-ish a.m... I try not to do any earlier than 9:30 a.m.

So this a.m., she woke at 6:20 a.m. and sort of slept on and off until 6:50 a.m. - I actually don't know if she slept, because I couldn't see her face in the monitor, but she was quiet and still anyways for a few minutes at a time - no more than 5... she started showing sleepy signs at around 8:40 - but I ignored those!  But then more sleepy signs at 9:35 a.m., so I put her in by 9:40 a.m. and she slept two hours!

[*Liz*]

What were her naps like before she started waking at 5am? She may be on the low end of her sleep needs but hopefully we should be able to get her to sleep in slightly longer stretches. It looks as though her first nap is UT and she is essentially using this to catch up the sleep she should have finished off at night. the short naps in the day likely mean she is OT by bedtime and then has an EW as a result.

Has she always been a catnapper though?

I think I would tyr and stretch that first morning nap - so add 15 mins and see what happens. Use quiet activity to help you extend when she gets tired - I like to walk in the garden and touch the flowers or read books. If the nap is still 45 mins after 2 or 3 days then add another 15 mins. At 7.5 months she should be able to handle about 3 hrs A although the first of the day can be the shortest - I still think she should be able to do more than 2hrs.

You can tackle EWs 'head on' and ignore when they wake and hold them to the ideal nap time - but I would be wary of doing that with a baby who is only taking short naps all day. I do tackle EWs by ignoring a lot of the early wake up but if your lo has had a better nap routine before then we need to fix that first.

I think your DD should be able to do 2 long naps a day and a longer night - so you are not on cloud cuckoo land!!

PU/PD will not work on a chatty baby!! We need to fix this by a routine tweak, I think.

[palace]

I think your DD should be able to do 2 long naps a day and a longer night - so you are not on cloud cuckoo land!!

That's reassuring!

OK, so before she started waking early she used to catnap from 7.15 to 8am then proper nap from 9.30 to 11am and from 1.30 to 3pm.  She has never taken the last nap of the day very well, so that hasn’t really changed much but she used to sleep from 7pm to 7am straight.  Her daytime naps were always fantastic and even needed waking up for her next feed a few times.

This morning she woke at 5.50am (after a late night last night, didn't get to bed until 8pm because we got stuck in traffic on the way home from a day at the beach) and I got her up at about 6.15am once she started to cry.   She got quite droopy eyed after her b/f but I didn’t let her sleep and kept her busy with lots of play instead.  She had breakfast at 8am as normal and went down for a nap at 9.30am and slept until 10.50am – fantastic!

I’ll keep going with the routine and put her down for her nap this afternoon and see how it goes - I’ll try for the old time of 1.30pm take it from there.  Fingers crossed for tonight!

PU/PD will not work on a chatty baby!! We need to fix this by a routine tweak, I think.

Anything else I need to try or change?  Obviously a day at the beach isn't going to help matters much, although she had great naps yesterday because of the journey both ways so it has it's plus sides!  5.50am is a little bit of an improvement at least.  We have a trip to Norfolk this weekend and 2 nights in a B&B so it could be hard to sort things out this week but I'll give it my best shot - the journey is about 3 hours but the children keep her busy when she's awake so it's kind of "A" time when she's awake!

[*Liz*]

You did exactly the right thing. She is  trying to con you into a little early nap that she doesn't really need anymore by giving sleepy signs at her old nap time.

Looks like she will need a shorter A in the morning, getting longer as the day goes on from what she used to do before.

Let me know how the rest of the day goes, and then we can try and tweak.

I really don't think a late catnap will help either - it will just lead to UT EWs instead - so if she wakes early from the pm nap I would favour some low key A like a walk or a nice long bath and an earlier bedtime by 30 mins instead - that may suit her better.

Sounds like she is a good sleeper - so this shouldn't be toooo hard!!

[aimeeL]

GREAT!  Sounds like you did just right this am with pushing the A time!!

And totally agree with Liz about the low-key A time... I was very careful about that when we first started dropping the CN - long walk, long bath - but got careless last wk, and I noticed a huge difference in how hard it was to get settled when we were go-go-go all the way to bt, as opposed to taking it nice and easy..

[palace]

So far so good!  Despite the 5.50am wakeup / breastfeed, the rest of the day went like this:

8am breakfast
9.30 to 10.50am nap
11am bottle
12.30pm lunch
2.50pm to 3.20pm nap
3.30pm bottle
4.30pm dinner
6pm bath
7pm fast asleep, not even a whimper!  

Fingers crossed I get a slightly later wakeup time tomorrow - I'll let you know :-)

(ETA: I have no idea why I'm up so blimming late - I could be paying the price if Louise decides to wake me up at 4.30am!!   )

[aimeeL]

Excellent!  Keep us posted!

[palace]

Well today has been a bit strange so I'm not sure how it will impact on tomorrow.  Louise slept right through last night from 7pm to 5.50am.  When she woke up this morning she chatted to herself and shouted a bit but didn't actually cry until about 6.20am so I went and got her then and gave her a breastfeed.  I stuck to the rest of her feeding routine as normal but her naps were a bit all over the place:

I put her down for her first nap at 9am - she was so tired by then that I couldn't keep her awake any longer but she only managed to sleep for 50 minutes.  Should I have put her down even earlier?  If she'd woken at the "correct" time of around 7am then it would only have been a 2 hour A time, but as it was it was over 3 hours.

1pm nap (again, because her morning nap was so short she was pooped - over 3 hours A time by now).  She woke up screaming inconsolably after 20 minutes but I managed to shh/pat her back to sleep and she then slept for another full hour so it was a much better nap.

When she woke up I had to run some errands and she played happily in the car with her toys for the 30 minute journey.   She had a bottle at around 3.30pm before we set off home again for what should have been another 30 minute journey but we got stuck in flipping traffic yet again!  We didn't get home until 5pm and she had slept for about an hour in the car.  She was late having her dinner and rubbed her eyes and yawned her way through it but managed to eat everything and didn't finish eating until 5.40pm - I would normally take her for her bath at 6pm but I felt it was too soon after eating so I kept her up for an extra 30 minutes calm time on my knee.

Bath time was fine, she was as happy and lovely as ever but she absolutely refused to take a breastfeed, no matter what I tried it just wasn't happening.  I'm sure she wasn't hungry as she ate her dinner so late, but that means she's missed out on her calories for the day - goodness knows what the impact will be on her sleeping / waking.  She's fast asleep now, struggled a little more than usual to get to sleep but only about 20 to 30 minutes of me having to go back to her and shh/pat and she's now sparked out fast asleep.  

I think the lesson for me today is that, until this routine is "fixed", I need to spend some time concentrating on Louise and forget running errands, etc - it's just too risky!  Fingers crossed she doesn't wake early tomorrow, but she's likely to wake even earlier than ever if she's hungry.  I'm off to bed just in case!!

[*Liz*]

Longer naps later on in the day were a huge issue for me - caused an EW every time - but we shall see. You have to go out sometimes - its impossible to have the perfect routine and stay home all the time.

I'm sure that first nap was OT - I know its bext to ignore as much of the EW as possible but perhaps put her down 10 mins earlier and see if it helps. As long as most of the EW is ignored then it will still help to eliminate it. I tend to count the EW bit as 'half A', and the full A from when I get him up so I do allow a slightly earlier nap but not early enough for DS ta make up his sleep.

Fingers crossed for tonight

 

[palace]

Well it's great news, she didn't wake up until 6.10am this morning despite missing a feed last night - what a result!!  She went back down for her nap at 9.30am this morning and I need to go and wake her up for her milk feed now or it will slip too far in the day - a 2 hour nap, I can't believe it!  What a little trooper, she did this to me when I started her out on EASY - she called the shots and virtually showed me what to do, not the other way around!  Hopefully she'll wake a little later each morning as the quality of her daytime naps improve.  If all else fails and she wakes around 6am every day, it's a huge improvement on 5am and feels far more civilised - I used to get up that time every day for work anyway so it's no big deal!   

Thanks all for your help, especially Liz, it's been brilliant and fingers crossed we're nearly there now.   

[*Liz*]

Yey, fingers crossed she keeps it up

 

[aimeeL]

Yay!  That's terrific!!!  Good for the both of you!