Early waking with 11mnth old and her four-year-old brother

[katharine3]

Hi there,

Just wondered if anyone could help.  My 11 months old daughter has been waking between 5am and 5.30am every morning for the last few months.  I'm sure that pu/pd would work for her, but everytime I try it her cries wake her older brother in the next room.  My son has to go to school and him being up at 5.30am is not good news as he gets so tired at school that the teachers feel they need to tell me about it!  So, the only thing we can do is get daughter up at 5.30am and take her downstairs.  Then she's ready to go back to bed at about 6.45am, but this is too early for her first nap really.

To add to the problems, my daughter goes to nursery every day from 8.30am to 3.30pm while I'm at work and they don't seem to get her to nap as well in the day as I can at home (it's obviously much noisier there) and so her daytime sleep routine is a bit all over the place.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks.

[Jaime]

couple of quick thoughts...

- can you put some white noise in her brother's room?  it might help drown out her noise & let him sleep better...

- can you post a sample schedule of her day - when naps usually occur.

it is harder to sleep away from home - does the nursery at least have a quiet(er) place for sleeping???

[katharine3]

Hi there,

Lucy's routine at the moment is this:
5-5.30am wakes
5.30am me or hubby take her downstairs for bottle
5.45am try to put her back in cot but she invariably cries
5.50am me or hubby get her up so she doesn't wake her brother and take her downstairs again
6.30am brother gets up so Lucy can go back to bed
6.40am sleeps
7.30am wakes, has breakfast
8.30am off we go to drop Lucy at nursery and Oscar at school
10.30am has snack and then nap at nursery
11.15am usually wakes after only 45 mins (can sleep for up to an hour and a half at home though)
12.00 lunch
2.30pm bottle (normally only drinks about 4oz)
3pm nap
3.20pm wakes
3.40pm I pick her up
4.45pm teatime
6.15pm bath, bottle
7pm asleep in cot until 5am-5.30am the next morning

This is all approximate as routine tends to vary depending on when she wakes and when she goes back to sleep the first time.    Not sure about white noise in Oscar's room - he sleeps so well at the moment (when he's not being woken by Lucy) that I wouldn't want to change anything for him.  He's slept through since he was 5 weeks old (he's now 4 and a half).

Any help would be great.  Could anyone give me a summary of the wake to sleep technique - I wondered about trying that.

Thanks,
Katharine

[Jaime]

okay, a couple things come to mind as i read your schedule...

- i think she's waking at 5ish cause she's had enough nighttime sleep.  10-11 hours is pretty typical by 11 months.  HOWEVER, i think she could be extending IF she wasn't hungry.  her last bottle is around 6ish - and i think by 5:30 she's just hungry again, and that's why you end up feeding her. 

- 3 hrs awake time is probably too much in the morning.  if you could cut it back to 2-2.5 hrs before her morning nap you might see improvement at the nursery (and you might not, but she's getting old enough that 45 minutes isn't the end of the world).  also, moving her afternoon nap back to 2pm should help too.  i think by 3pm she's just so tired she can't settle properly and that contributes to the short nap there.

- if you can move her dinner (teatime??) a little later, you can probably push that last bottle a little later. 

you might also want to read this... it kind of applies here:
https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php/topic,46907.0.html

wake to sleep is a method where you go in about an hour before the habitual waking occurs, and you just kind of stroke her cheek (or whatever) until she stirs.  you do not want to fully wake her up.  the idea is that you disturb her sleep cycle enough so that hopefully she will be in a deeper sleep at the habitual waking time & not wake up.

hope something in here helps you!