early wake ups -- 9 mths -- need new ideas

[julieb]

DS, 9 mths, has had early wake ups for the past 2 weeks, 5:30-6:00 am.  We've always had problems with early wake ups, but usually not prior to 6:00, and I've usually been able to fix it for a short while and get him to snooze more until 7:00. 

Tried WTS but it made it worse (5:20-5:30 now!).  Tried feeding, the magic luvie, changing diaper (always wakes and poops!), and teething tablets.  Even tried bringing him to our bed, but he thinks it's playtime.

All of the early wake ups before made sense because the sun was rising.  But now it's still pitch black outside!  What makes him think it's time to get up?  He pretty much sleeps through the night, but even when he does wake, he quickly goes back to sleep, so why does he treat this "night waking" different?

Current bedtime is 6:30.  I've tried pushing it back but it only makes the early wakings worse (and NEVER compensates by sleeping in later).  6:30 seems like his magic number.  Not sure what else to try except just getting him up and accepting it??  :?

[Intransit]

Im going through a bit of the same...no reply to my post either yet!

[newaussie]

My DD at 8 months has gone through periods where she wakes up early and really there was nothing I could do about it once I realized that she was wide awake. 

I think when they've had enough sleep you can't force them to sleep longer.  In my case I just kept sticking to my routine which is a 7:00pm bedtime and eventually she has gone back to waking closer to 7:00.  Most days she's up at 6:45 and sometimes earlier.  We have also tried bringing her into bed but as you say it doesn't work she tries to play with us.

How much sleep does he get during the day?  Is he sleeping all the way through from 6:30 to 5:30am?  If he is you're very lucky.  I'm still feeding once per night on most days.

Also how long did you try to shift his bedtime?  It won't happen in a few days you might need to persist for a couple of weeks to know for sure if it's not working.  Their bodies like ours get into a rythm and it takes a while to change that rythm.

One last question.   Does he have a big feed when he wakes up?  This would indicate he is really hungry and needs to be fed then.  Also if he has a poo at that time in the morning then there's not much you can do.  I think that contributed to the early wakings for us.  I would wait and see if she would settle and then when I went in I found she had done a poo and couldn't leave her in it.  She also woke a few times at 4:00am with a poo.

Good Luck but I think things will probably settle down on their own as his BMs get into a more sane pattern. 


Judy

[julieb]

Anyone else have any suggestions for me?  I'm sooo frustrated.  I've waited so long for him to sleep through the night to only have 5 am wake ups now?!  ugh! 


Judy, thanks for your comments.  I've wondered about the amount of sleep, but no matter what I do about bedtime, it seems that wake up time is programmed.  And I  much rather have him in bed at 6:30, getting 10.5-11 hours of sleep as opposed to 7:00~8:00, getting even less, and potentially effecting other things negatively.  He has never adjusted things himself, I've lived with a 6 am wake up for 2-3 months, despite sticking to my routine.

During the day, he's getting a 1.5 hour morning nap and a 45 minute afternoon nap most days (that's my other problem, started short afternoon naps about a month ago).  Yes, he's sleeping through the night more or less now and I'm thankful, but as I mentioned above, I feel like I've paid my dues long enough!   :lol:   I waited patiently for over 7 months!

And the morning poo has been ingrained since the day he was born.  I don't think that schedule will ever change as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, Asher always poos shortly after he wakes!   :wink:   The key is getting him to sleep longer so he doesn't wake and poo!


So the last few days, I tried WTS again at 4 am and he was already in light sleep and sat up the moment he realized I was in the room.  :shock:   :?   Then I also tried changing his diaper (the poo  :roll: ) and feeding him in case he was hungry and put him back to bed like it was a night waking.  No luck either.  I really don't think he's waking out of hunger.

[Katet]

Julie
I think his natural body clock is set at that early hour & to be honest with a 6.30pm bedtime, getting 11 hours out of him is pretty much within the relm of normal. My 2yo has never slept more than 10.5-11 hours a night & I have had to shift my expectations of 7am being morning... 6.30 is a good morning for me now

My suggestion would be shift it 10mins every 3 days so it won't result in over tired... the big shifts are the problem. there will always be a lag of the morning catching up so If you are going to get results it may take over a month to see them.

[julieb]

So I should accept 5 am as his new natural time?   :shock:   I just don't understand why it's all of a sudden now.  He's always slept 11.5-12.5 hours a night until 2 weeks ago.  So why does he suddenly need less sleep?  And he didn't wake prior to 6 am until 2 weeks ago when I tried WTS at 5 am for ONE day and he's been waking at 5 am ever since!  And I tried moving his bedtime back by 15 minutes (to 7:00) gradually for a couple weeks prior to that but there was no difference in the 6:00 am wake ups.

I'm just so discouraged.  I'm so not a morning person at all.  5 am this morning was so depressing for me.  And my fear is if I start getting him up then, he'll just start waking earlier and earlier (happened in the past) and he'll want to start going to bed even earlier, before my DH even gets home to see him in the evenings. 

[Katet]

I know what it is like to not be a morning person.
The other thing is try to delay his first nap, that may be to close to his morning wake up & "robbing from his night sleep"... try to get it 2.5-3.5 hours from your ideal wake up time... from my experience you will have about a week of hard work keeping him awake.

Unfortunately 5/6am seems to be very much an evolutionary thing & some babies/children (like my ds#1 may always struggle to get past it... I know my dad says he hardly ever has slept past 6am in his life!

Also when you moved his bed time to 7pm you may not have let it be at that time for long enough for him to adjust it

[jchang]

DD wakes between 6 - 7 am which is way too early for dh and me.  Since her bedtime is 7pm, I figured that I can't change that waking time.  So I started bringing her into bed when she wakes up & bf her there.  Although it doesn't always put her back to sleep, she stays pretty mellow so that dh & I can have a light snooze.  When I first started doing it, dd thought it was playtime but I stayed with it b/c we were just too darned tired at that hour so she eventually learned to play with her toys in bed after bfing while we lightly snoozed.   We can usually get an extra hour with this method.  :lol:

[Bruno'smami]

Hi,
I have always made the same thing, specially on weekends, my ds is know 11 months, and the difference is, I just let him play on the floor whit his toys and whatever he wants, our room is a mess after this :? , but  we have almost one hour extra!!!       

[newaussie]

I just recently went through this problem after finally getting our DD to sleep through the night.  At first she woke at 6:00am, then 5:00am then 4:30.  I would settle her back to sleep only for her to wake again soon after.  Then I resorted to bringing her into bed with us and I realized she would go back to sleep until 7:00am.  So then I thought she must be somehow uncomfortable in her cot.  So we put the heater on now low at night and that seems to have fixed the problem.  Last night I left the heater off and sure enough she was up again early this morning.  I put the heater on and she went back to sleep until 7:00am.

It's worth checking the temperature of the room to see if that helps unless you've already found a solution! 

[julieb]

Thanks!  I've recently started turning on the heat and putting an undershirt on underneath.  Problem is, it's still so hot when we go to sleep (need the AC on), but by morning it's darn chilly (need the heat!).  It's annoying having to switch everything over.  And now I have night waking problems from bedtime till about 10 or 11 pm -- keep wondering if he's too hot!  :lol:   If it's not one thing, it's another.  He still yells out at 5 am, but for the most part, doesn't insist on starting his day until 6 am or later.   

I'm trying several things, but haven't had consistent results yet.  Keep having random hiccups.  But it's at least better than it was!!

[newaussie]

Glad to hear that things have improved.  I know what you mean.  Just when you think you've sorted one problem another one pops up.  For the past few nights we've been having trouble getting our DD to sleep.  It used to be so easy.  In fact that was the one sleep time that we sorted out first.  I think she's teething again because she's chewing on her blanket constantly and just moaning not full on crying but it's hard to think of her in pain and eventually I pick her up and cuddle her until she settles down then I try again.  Most times I have to pat her to sleep.  Sleeping through has also taken a step back because she's now waking at 10:00 or 11:00 for a last feed which she had given up for about two weeks.


I don't know what kind of heater you have but what I do with my DD is to dress her lightly if it's hot and then turn on the heat really low and close the door.  That keeps the heat in and prevents the room getting too hot at the same time.  Then you don't have to worry about over heating.  The other thing we had which we don't use anymore is a baby monitor which tells you the temperature of the room.  We used it in winter but now I find that I can usually just check the weather report and if it's going to be cool overnight just turning the heater on low will do the trick.