4am Habitual Wake Up and What seems like seperation anxiety

[DadinToronto]

Hello all, I post this at 4:58am while my wife is taking a shift trying to comfort our little one.

For the last three or four weeks our perfect sleeper has been waking at 4am consistently.

She was text book for the past nine months a great sleeper through until 7am.

We went to England for a holiday which messed up her routine and then she got sick on holiday which made it worse and then she was sick after we got back - so it has been quite a mess. We have followed the baby whisperer book to a tee but in England when she was sick and not sleeping she did come in the bed and nap at night for about 5 nights in a row.

Now back to where we are:

Has two great 1.5 naps a day. Is a big old baby as she is off the charts in size but eats really well. Sleeps great at night from 8pm - we still need to transition out the dream feed as we had meant to but in all this chaos we didn't want to change that too. And then like clockwork she wakes up screaming at 4am - won't self soothe and can be patted down to a sleepy position but the second you move away she starts screaming again.

Sorry what generally happens is my wife and I take turns and trying to pat her back to sleep and it normally takes about two hours to get her down between us - which is clearly not skill just a case of her getting exhausted and then is back awake at 7am - as if nothing happened.

Any help would be appreciated - even the most basic! Looking for any advice.

Thank you all and I hope you are getting a better night sleep than we are.

[KookyK]

How old is she?

[DadinToronto]

Sorry that would be important info! One week shy of 10 months.

[KookyK]

My 9 month old has turned pretty bad recently since returning from hol and being ill/teeth so you have my sympathy.

I'm no expert here as my 9 month old has never been a great sleeper I might add so hopefully someone in the know will come along soon. What might be helpful is to post your EASY in case some part of the routine needs to be tweaked to help with the early waking (eg pushing forward first nap, A times changing etc).

I personally do some APOP at the 4am mark as my DS has always had issues around that time And I like to hope that if he self settles the restof the time (I'm working on returning to that again!) then it won't hurt to do what I need to do at 4am (in my case generally that's feed/cuddle).

Last night after returning from hol and a 2 hr time different he decided 3.30am was morning and after almost an hour I came downstairs with him and cuddled him on the sofa in the dark and it snapped him out of the screaming and we both got one extra hour. I'm also prepared to accept that my DS likes an early start (5.15 onwards is morning if restof night ok). I don't love this but after 9 months I still can't change it!!!

[Sarah - Enfys' Mum]

I would guess that if she's having two 1.5 hour naps - that's the problem. She's using nap time to catch up from her early wake up. Like pp said, can you post your routine, but I think you're probably going to have to cap the first nap and also possibly push it later.

[DadinToronto]

Routine is:

7am wake up
Eat
A
9:30am Sleep
11:15 Wake Up
Eat A
3pm Nap
4:30pm Eat
A
6:30pm Eat
7pm Bath/Feed/Bed

[KookyK]

It's a v short first A time for her age. My DS is low sleep needs and if he slept that much he's be bad at night. Some ppl do a short then a long but some do vice Versa re nap capping so I guess you could experiment.

There's a link to average A times somewhere but I'm sure at 10 months you're closer to 4 hours usually so that 2.5 hrs at first needs gradual moving forward.