10 month old 3am-4am WU?!

[Katebydesign]

Hi all!

Was hoping to get advice on our latest sleep issue.  Since my last post many months ago, my daughter is still a terrible sleeper but has progressed leaps and bounds.  She sleeps in her crib and self soothes like an angel for naps and at bed time. 

Unfortunately, at 3am-4am she is awake and ready to play until she falls back asleep at 5:30 am.   She usually does not cry out until she has been awake for an hour.  But within that first hour she is babbling and laughing so loudly that my husband and I are kept up anyways, even with the monitor off.  After the first hour she starts to whine and call out, eventually turning into an all-out scream.   We have left her alone in there, picked her up, brought her into bed with us,  fed her, etc. but none of those things put her back to sleep.   She is WIDE awake.

Her current schedule is as follows:

6:30 am wake time (we have to leave the house for work at this time so this is pretty non-negotiable)

10:00-11:00 am first nap

2:30-3:30 pm second nap

7:00 bed time

She usually fusses for a short time between 12am and 1am but puts herself back to sleep fairly quickly.  The trouble comes between 3 and 4.   

We have played with bed time and a later bed time only results in an even earlier, painful wake up call from her.

Any advice is appreciated!

Edit:  I should add that this has been happening for about 3 months now.

[katie80]

Wow, 3mo is a long time for that long NW... (((hugs)))! It happens every night?!

We have played with bed time and a later bed time only results in an even earlier, painful wake up call from her.

Have you tried an earlier BT... 7 or even 6:30? Because you mentioned a later bedtime makes for an earlier wake and she's been waking for so long, I'm wondering if those NWs are possibly be due to OT (overtiredness) and an earlier BT might help.

The other thing that might be worth a try is to push the morning nap later to 10:30. It's quite normal for a 10mo old to be on 4hr A time. That may make the first nap extend to 1.5hr, which means you could cut the afternoon nap to 30min and she may in turn have more drive to sleep at night. This would be looking at the NW as more of a UT (undertired) issue.

What do you think? Are either of those things doable?

The other factors to take into consideration with long NWs are discomfort issues like teething, reflux, food allergies/intolerances (although with all of those things I don't know that she'd be waking happily ). Environmental factors can come into play as well... is it cold in her room come 3-4am? I can't imagine there would be any noises happening consistently at that hour, but it never hurts to rule everything out.

[Katebydesign]

Wow, 3mo is a long time for that long NW... (((hugs)))! It happens every night?!

We have played with bed time and a later bed time only results in an even earlier, painful wake up call from her.

Have you tried an earlier BT... 7 or even 6:30? Because you mentioned a later bedtime makes for an earlier wake and she's been waking for so long, I'm wondering if those NWs are possibly be due to OT (overtiredness) and an earlier BT might help.

The other thing that might be worth a try is to push the morning nap later to 10:30. It's quite normal for a 10mo old to be on 4hr A time. That may make the first nap extend to 1.5hr, which means you could cut the afternoon nap to 30min and she may in turn have more drive to sleep at night. This would be looking at the NW as more of a UT (undertired) issue.

What do you think? Are either of those things doable?

The other factors to take into consideration with long NWs are discomfort issues like teething, reflux, food allergies/intolerances (although with all of those things I don't know that she'd be waking happily ). Environmental factors can come into play as well... is it cold in her room come 3-4am? I can't imagine there would be any noises happening consistently at that hour, but it never hurts to rule everything out.

Thank you for your response! Yes, it happens EVERY night!  About once every 2-3 weeks she will sleep until 5/5:30, so we know that she is capable, just not willing

She already goes to bed between 6:30-7:00.  Do you think we should do even earlier?

We can definitely play with the nap time.  She goes to daycare so it's easier said than done, but I can always request that we try it that way.  She is usually very tired by as early as 8:30 but we always fight to keep her up to get to that appropriate awake time.  All in due to getting such little sleep at night, I'm sure.

She is medicated for reflux and has several food intolerance's (FPIES), but even on days that she hasn't had any solids she sticks to this regime!  But yes, she is definitely waking up happy 95% of the time and doesn't seem to be in any sort of pain.

Thank you for your advice!

[katie80]

She already goes to bed between 6:30-7:00.  Do you think we should do even earlier?

I'd start by doing it at 6:30 (sleeping by) for a week or so and see if that makes a difference. 

We can definitely play with the nap time.  She goes to daycare so it's easier said than done, but I can always request that we try it that way.  She is usually very tired by as early as 8:30 but we always fight to keep her up to get to that appropriate awake time.  All in due to getting such little sleep at night, I'm sure.

I'm sure it's very hard... even if you can push her gently by 5-10min every few days.  I suppose you could always put her down as soon as she seems tired for a couple days (maybe on the weekend) and see if some catch up naps would help.  It's kind of trial and error, really.

I'm sure you're on top of the reflux/intolerance issues, but I do think it sounds like the NWs are maybe not all down to routine since they've gone on for so long.  Is there anything else you can think of that might be causing her enough discomfort to wake for that long at night?  I'll see if I can get someone with more experience in that area to take a look.

[katie80]

So, the other opinions I got were just as you and I had originally discussed... she's waking happy and it certainly seems that if she was uncomfortable from something she would be upset. Have you given any of the routine suggestions a try yet?

[Katebydesign]

So, the other opinions I got were just as you and I had originally discussed... she's waking happy and it certainly seems that if she was uncomfortable from something she would be upset. Have you given any of the routine suggestions a try yet?

Thanks for looking into it, Katie!  Since my last post, we have tried many different things.  One of them being extending the time between her wake time and her first nap.  She went 5am to 10:30 a couple of days and we saw no change in the 3am wake up.   
We did a asleep by 6:30 bed time and that had her waking up fairly alert around 9pm and then up again at 2am. 

I feel like I can't win!  Things are getting progressively more stressful and difficult now that I am ruling out options.  I have considered bringing in a sleep consultant, I just wish they weren't so much money!

[katie80]

Oh (((hugs))), I'm sorry to hear things aren't any better.

Can you write out what her daily routine looks like now in terms of wake-up, naps, bedtime? And, how old is she now? I wonder if she's low sleep needs and we need to look at shifting things toward one nap...