Author Topic: How can we stop these 5am wake ups?  (Read 1446 times)

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Offline J&Jsmom

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How can we stop these 5am wake ups?
« on: November 05, 2005, 18:19:40 pm »
Please help because I am about to lose my mind. My DS is 20 months old and for several months now he has been waking up at 5am, sometimes 5.30 and occassionally at 6am. Freakishly he will suddenly have a day where he wakes at 7am but these are VERY rare.

But for the last few weeks he has consistently been waking up at 5.05am exactly. We leave him in his cot (in the vain hope that he'll go back to sleep) and he usually plays happily by himself for about 45 mins but gets increasingly irritated until he starts to yell. I can't tell you how much it sucks to be up before Cbeebies even starts  :shock:

With a 7 week old who has several night time wakings, these early morning starts are now killing me. And I just don't know what to do to get rid of them.

Here's his normal routine:

Wake at 5am

Is irritable as hell by 12 when he has lunch and then goes down for about a 2 hour nap. Now sometimes he sleeps for less (like at nursery he can have as little as 30 mins, and sometimes he can sleep for about 2.5 hours). Sometimes he can't stay awake till lunch so he has a morning nap before lunch of about the same length.

He then has supper at around 5.30, about an hour of TV and then bath and in bed by 7pm. Recently he has been talking to himself for about 20 mins before falling asleep.

Now this last week I've been monitoring his sleep to see whether his length of naps and the time he goes to bed has any baring on what time he wakes up. The only day he woke up later (6.30am) was when he only had a 30 min nap the day before. But if I cut his nap right back to only 30 mins a day, he is soooooooo grizzly and has even more tantrums than normal.

Letting him go to bed later doesn't seem to make a difference. That said, we kept him up an hour later on the night the clocks went back and he woke up at 5am again - but in effect he did sleep an hour later or else he would have woke up at 4am  :shock:  So maybe keeping him up an extra hour would do the trick - but I can't stand the thought of having him up till 8pm. I am so desperate for 7pm to come just so that I can have a rest. And even so, even if I give up that extra hour of me time in the evening, it would still mean he wakes at 6am - which is still too darn early!!!!

I don't know what to do. He has recently started having more stuffed animals in bed with him - because he asks for them - but we're wondering whether they act as too much of a stimulus for him when he wakes up in the morning. Then again, if we take them out and he wakes up early, he'll have nothing to play with and will probably not sit happily for 45 mins.

I try to make sure he gets lots of fresh air and exercise late in the day to tire him out - but that seems to have little impact.

Any ideas??????????? Please help. I am desperate. :?
Melissa
Mom to:
Joshua Charles Boleslaw born 14.02.2004
Jamie Edward Christopher born 15.09.2005