Has anyone "solved" the chronic EW?

[lilalley]

LO has been a 5-5:30 waker since birth.  Anyone ever had success in changing wake time with a chronic EWer?  Was the change permanent?  Did you use W2S?  How many nights?

[LucySol]

i cracked my EW!!!!!!!! she woke at 5.30 for 12 months!!!! AT 18 months i introduced lights on a timer and she wasnt able to get up till  her lights came on.it took 4/5 days for her to get the message!
she now wakes up at 7am when her lights come on...in fact the last few days i have left her lights off and she has been waking up at 8am!!!!!!!!!!!!

[*Becky*]

wow lucy - that is amazing!

[Brodster'sMommy]

I have two approaches that have worked.

My first approach is to cut DSs nap down to less than 2 hours. But if that fails, then I try my second option which is pretty extreme and not BW recommended (I think). I keep DS up late for a few nights so that when he wakes the next morning at his usual time (5:45am), he is tired enough to go back to sleep with very minimal encouraging. When I say late, I mean super late - 2 or 3 hours past bedtime. He now wakes around 7:45 ish - his usual waking time b4 EWs came into our lives. And after 2 or 3 late nights, I'm able to put him down for bed at a normal time. So I don't necessarily recommend it but it's an option if all else fails!!

I really love lucys idea. I will have to try that when DS gets a bit older!

Hope you get it solved. EW are Is Peter coming tonight?so tough

[Sarah72]

When ds was younger we used the really late bedtime a couple of times just to force a later wake up time. But then we too introduced the lights on a timer and we haven't had a 5.30 wake up. I tell all my RL friends but they think I am odd!

Please try it. We used a night light we already had so it only cost the price of an electric timer. I would recommend a digital one. We set it for 7.15 in the week and 8.00 at the weekend! Also I hope it will have the added bonus of keeping him in bed once he is in a bbb. 

[lilalley]

With the timer... do you let them whine/cry until the light comes on? 

Lately, I have not gone into her room until 6am trying to get her the hint to go back down.  Then she just whine/cries for 30 min. to an hour never going back to sleep.  It has been a month!

[LucySol]

i set the timer for 6am for the first couple of days.i just left her to it if she was moaning but if she was crying i just opened her door and said 'its still sleep time.wait for your lights to come on.And i repeated this if necessary.As soon as the lights came on i made a big thing of 'its morning time' 'time to get up!'.it took a few days for her to get it and then gradually i adjusted the timer to later till we got to 7am.
we did have to do a lot of role play with her dolls to get her to understand what was going to happen.

[Tweakster]

Things are getting better here too.  We haven't gotten to the light/timer thing in full force yet because he doesn't understand it but we've just capped the nap like pp at 2 hrs and he sleeps 11 hours most nights.  Of course that only means 6 a.m. around here but really it's way better than 5/5:30.  We were having minimal success with a later bedtime/longer nap.  But again it only means 6 a.m. 

Does she have toys and things to play with in her crib?  We always leave Finn in there until 6 regardless of when he wakes, he can play with toys and books until it's time to go in.  If he doesn't have stuff to do then he does the mantra whining.

[mmom]

We followed in Lucy's footsteps and introduced the light too.  I am not sure if it was that or just a developmental thing, but my LO finally started sleeping later.  Lucky for me, it happened around the time that his brother was born.  He was 20+ months though, so I dealt with EW's practically from birth up until that point.

[2zkids]

I'm so glad I found this post!  This is what I have been having trouble with since the birth of my DS, his is now 18 months and I couldn't think of anything else to do to get him to sleep past 5/5:30.  I am going to try the lights timer, a similar thing helped my DD but she was older and knew her numbers so could watch for a 6 on her clock before she could get up.  I don't want to wait until he can match his numbers!  I have been trying to leave him in bed and not turning the light on until 6 for at least 6-8 months and it has not worked at all, so I'm hoping that giving him something to look for will help!!  Any other ideas would be great!  THANK YOU!!

[Tweakster]

I really feel with some of them it's largely developmental and has to do quite a bit with teeth.  I don't find it coincidental that after his canines pushed through, he slept better.  We did the whole DF meds etc. but still could never get him past 5:30.  Don't know why but 6 feels just so much later lol 

The way I see it is that today we were all up by 6:30, did breakfast, played, did some cleaning, went shopping and had most of the day sorted out before 12 noon.  At the very least it is a silver lining, should you be looking for one lol

We had EW since birth too really, it was around 4 mths that it became clear that his preferred wake time was 5 a.m.

[2zkids]

I'm wondering if some of you could post your sleep schedules, I am a morning person anyway but I'm wondering what time they should be going to bed if they are waking up that early!  My DS is 18 mo.

Right now ours is 5/5:30 wake up
11:30 nap (used to be 2-3 hours now it's 1.25-2 usually...)
asleep by 8 (bedtime starts at 6:30 with a bath, books etc.)

Thanks!

[lilalley]

Maybe I'm a quitter but this morning we did W2S at 4:15 am...  She stayed awake.  Super fun. First and last time I'll try that.

I am going to try the timer light starting this weekend.  Tonight I am going to sneak a few soft toys in her crib.

These EW make me think we will never get to 1 nap.   wake at 5am nap at 1pm???  Whaaa ha ha ha!  That will be the day.

[rach321]

We had the same problem with W2S!! I agree not much fun.  Does she have blackout blinds etc? How about making a book of photos of mummy and daddy and friends and pets etc so she can have a look at that when she's waiting to wake up.  My LO's nursery does this and all the kids love flicking through the photo books.  We are on our first week of trying the lights on a timer thing but our LO is older so not sure if that will make any difference, but you could still go through the motions and make a big thing of the day begins when the lights come on.  If she's waking at 5.30 am then I would set them to come on for 5.35 and make a big deal of it then every few days move it forward 5 minutes and see how it goes.  My LO usually stirs at 5.00 but will have a moan then go back to sleep for 45mins if I'm lucky so our lights are set to come on at 5.45 at the moment, at the weekend I'm moving it forward 5 more minutes and we will see what happens.  It did take us ages to get to one nap as well with our chronic EW even now on some days he will still take 2 naps - it doesn't seem to make any difference to his wake up time.  If you did try a 1 nap day then I would try something like this

0500 wake up
10.30 nap ( would need to be 2 hrs or longer)
6.00-6.30 bedtime

You would have to be really careful about OT setting in so if you were feeling brave I would only try that for a couple of days then switch back to 2 naps to let her catch up again. We spent a lot of time going back and forth between 1 nap and 2. Hope that helps  - we haven't solved our EW yet but we have moved on from our hideous week of 0415 wake-ups! Makes me shudder just thinking about it!!

[lilalley]

More fantastic ideas rach321- photo book and moving the timer by 5 min.

I put toys in her crib for this morning... still just crying and whining.  I'll keep trying.  We do have blackout blinds.  I will be able to buy and try the timer this weekend.

Here is a typical schedule right now.
5:15 awake
9am nap-1 hour
2pm nap-1 hour
7pm asleep