How do I get baby to sleep later in AM?

[Carys' mom]

Hi,

We're still working on training our 6 month old daughter to sleep, and it seems we're having a breakthrough with getting her to go to sleep for naps and at bedtime, but she's still waking up pretty early in the morning (5:00 ish). This morning, she woke up around that time and after "talking" to herself for a while, started crying for us to come in. I tried to get her to go back to sleep, but she just wanted to play. I stayed in the room but didn't interact with her. She would just continue "talking" and rolling around, but as soon as I would try to leave the room, she'd start crying again. Any ideas on how to get her to go back to sleep??? She's a Spirited baby, so she's a real challenge to deal with in terms of sleep. Any help would be appreciated!

[Gigismom]

hi
we have an early riser too.  at around 6 and 7 months, it was REALLY early, like between 4-5 am.  NOTHING i did would get her to sleep longer.  so we just rolled with it.  she was going to bed at about 7 pm at that time, so we decided to try putting her to bed later.  we started putting her to bed at 8 pm and that worked.  it took a few days to kick in, but she gradually started sleeping later.  she usually wakes now between 6-7 am.  still early, but so much better.  occasionally, we do have a day or two where she will wake at 5 am, but it's not every single day like it used to be.  so you can try playing around with her bedtime for a bit and see if that does anything.  good luck.

[Carys' mom]

Thanks, Lindsey. We are trying changing her bedtime, except we're putting her to bed earlier. We've read in several different books that putting them to bed earlier is supposed to help them sleep later in the morning. So far, it seems to be working. She's been getting up around 6:30 or so. Better than 5am!  :lol:

Thanks again!

[Poppy & Lily]

Hi Melanie,

Just a thought...is her room dark in the mornings? the way we stopped the dreaded 5am wake up calls was by putting 'black out' lining on her curtains so that no light could get through... now she sleeps till 7-7.30am.

HTH

[Daniel's mummy]

We too have had a very early waker for a few weeks.  He would wake at about 5 and want to get up to play.  :shock:  Never seemed particularly hungry as we wouldn't feed him til 7am and he never seemed bothered.

Over the last week he has just switched to 2 naps in the day rather than 3 and, hey presto, he's now waking up between 6.30 and 7am.    I guess he was just wide awake by 5am because he was having so much day sleep. 

Now he wakes around 7am and goes back down for a nap at about 9.30am.  He usually sleeps for about 1.5 hours so is up about 11.  I'm trying to hold him off til 2pm for his next nap and again he has about 1.5 hours which takes him through til 3.30pm.  Some days it is quite hard work getting him through til 7pm bedtime without another sleep, but at least he's tired when he goes to bed!  And it really seems to be making a difference so we're gonna stick with it now.

Don't know if that hepls at all.  He seemed to be trying to go to 2 naps himself for a while.  Some days he was fine and other days it was awful.  But this week he seems to have cracked it. Yay!

[Carys' mom]

Thanks everyone - these are great ideas. We plan on getting some curtains to darken the room more (we're currently using beach towels to cover the blinds  :lol: ). Carys is easily distracted, so the darker the room, the better. We're tinkering with her bedtime too to see if that will help.

Thanks again,