EARLY WIDE AWAKE CLUB!! WANT SUPPORT? JOIN US!

[legend_018]

My LO was up at 5am this morning. She was sleeping by 6:45pm and slept straight until 5am. I had to bring her up at 6:30pm because she had been up since 11am. She slept the night before about 10 1/2 hours and had a morning nap and that was it. I've been having a real hard time lately with naps. she did have a minor ear infection but has been on medicine since last Wednesday night. She also has teeth coming in on top. I believe they have pushed thru though. Every day is different. Sometimes she wont' go down for her morninig nap, others it's the afternoon nap. She's staying up for like 5-8 hours at once. I'm not sure if she is also showing signs of being an early kid as far as needing only one nap. This has been going on for I think 2 weeks now. I try controlling her naps in the morning at times, but that isnt' helping. Actually I don't like when I control her nap in the morning and than she doesn't take an afternoon nap because that's even less sleep that she would be getting. She has been pretty much sleeping thru the night though. maybe a short wake up for a bottle. one night it was 1am, another 3am, ect.  5am is pretty early though.

[litomi]

Legend _018, How old is your LO? around 10-11mo, right? That's about my DD's age. Similar situation here, DD sometimes refuses to take her 1st or 2nd nap....It's about once every 10 days
Do you still feed your LO when she wakes up at night? Just a thought... can your LO settle back to sleep without a feed? Have you tried to dilute the milk?

[legend_018]

she's 10 1/2 months old. Something else I've let her do "although I do try controlling the first nap down to 1 hours and it doesn't always work out" but she also will do something like this. sleep 10 hours at night and than take a long morning nap "like 2 hours" - wake around 11am and than stay up until bed time "6:30pm".

Last night she didn't wake in the middle of the night for a bottle. but she does wake usually at least once. sometimes the time is consistent and like this week it wasn't. I think 1 or 2 mornings she woke up at 3:30am/4:00am for a bottle and one night at 1am and another night at 3am. I give her 3 oz and dilute it with 2 oz of water.

[andibig]

Mary
if she is taking only 1 nap and shes awake from 11am onwards i'd really bring her bedtime much earlier.
early wake ups are a sign of overtiredness (sometimes) so putting her to bed earlier may help her sleep longer

[babyre33]

I think her ear infection should be getting better with meds by now.  I"ve had to put her to bed at 5:30ish for the past several days so she'll get the amount of sleep she needs.  She'd been waking at 5:15 no matter what.

But now that she's been going to bed earlier and getting enough sleep, she's getting up at 5:00, and today was not even 4:40!!!  My plan is to lengthen A times and put her to bed a little later each day hoping to get the morning wake time pushed back some.  I'd think she isn't overtired, and the meds are helping, so I t hink it's okay to try this plan.

What do you all think?  Would you try anything different?  What's worked for you in the past?

Her day is like this:
wake, 3.5 ish hrs of A time
nap #1, 4ish hrs of A time
nap #2, 4ish hrs of A time

[Mamalou]

So I've heard a NEW idea...
Nursekat suggested I try to push back everything 15 minutes every 2-3 days (wait til he gets used to it, then add 15 more the next day) Anybody try this??

Guess I thought I had posted before, but nope, so after 2 seemingly perfect days we still had 5 am wake-up!  (That's why I posted again on sleep board and Nursekat pm'd me that idea above)
People just keep telling me it's his 'internal clock'
I'm not ready to accept that yet.

babyre33--the plan looks ok, it's what we do (well am A time usually ends up 4 hrs -if he's woken at 5 am--I always try to keep him up til 9am)  but we haven't been able to get 4 hrs before bedtime.  Be careful with that last A time as it might cause overtiredness and an early waking...  just my opinion...but who am I? My LO is STILL waking at 5 am!!!

good luck
Kristi

[babyre33]

It very well could be too much A time before bed.  But I'm already putting her to bed at 5:30pm, and waking at 4:30am today.  I can't justify putting her to bed any earlier.  She goes down very well, not crashes, just peacefully drifts off on her own.

I don't think she's overtired.  I think it's been the ear infection and I hope that's getting better.

Nursekat has a good idea.  That's what I'm going to try.  the only thing is, her naps have been pretty irratic.  It's hard to determin what's "15 min earlier"

[Mamalou]

15 minutes LATER that should be...sorry about that.

Yep, I wouldn't try to put her in bed any earlier than 530, I thought 630 was too early! 

So I guess I'll try to keep him in his crib tomorrow til 615 (instead of just 6) we'll see how it goes.

Good luck to you if you try it too..
Kristi

[babyre33]

Kristi, yes I"m very nervous about moving things around.  I had been putting her to bed between 6-6:30 for about a week and a half.  This is because the early wakings were happening.  Putting her to bed early worked before, so I did it this time.  But 5:15 is EARLY in my book, and no matter if I bumped the bedtime later, good nap, bad nap,whatever, it was STILL 5:15.  I just tested the super early bedtime of 5:00pm to see what would happen, and finally she got over 11 hrs sleep.  She had been getting like 10.5 or 10.75.  So I was happy with the 11hrs + of sleep.  But now I have to try and get rid of the early wakings and start moving things in the other direction now that I think the ear infection is better.

I am so afraid this is her new "clock".  I do NOT want that!!!! I'm afraid her wake up will be 5:15 on a relatively regular basis.  If that happens, I'll be happy when the daylight saving time happens..

Oh, I knew you meant 15 minutes later, I didn't even notice the mistake until you pointed it out  .

I'll cross my fingers for you.  Let me know how it goes.

[babyre33]

For anybody who's on and may be able to help:

I don't know if you'll get this before the end of the night, but we've had a crazy day, dh was in charge of dd, I was in bed most ofthe day.  She woke in the middle of the night adn was up for an hour.  SHe had a total of 10.25 pm sleep, nap #1=25min #2=35min, I gave her a third and = 45 min.  She awoke from #3 at 4:40pm, what would be a good bedtime?  7:30?  Remeber she had been going to bed around 5:30, and yesterday 6.  I was trying to do move it gradually, but today messed that up.  What do you think?

HELP!!!!  I certainly don't want to make things worse, but I think that may already be the case

[Mamalou]

woohooo! 545 today! That's not early for us (goal is 6!)
That was after just 2 1-hour naps yesterday and in bed at almost 7.
Today he had 2  45-min naps and second was after 5+ hrs of A time (we were out) so not sure what tomorrow will bring....

good luck everyone
Kristi

[babyre33]

Congrats mamalou!  our naps are still crazy:  2 , 1hr naps would be heaven.  I can only get one or the other to be 1hr, the other is less.  Can't figure out why.

ANyway, not much time here.  Just wanted to report a bit of success.  DD has been waking a bit later, but I've changed her messy diaper (meds making her go ALL the time) and back to bed.  She'll sleep until I have to wake her at 7:30...love that "have to wake her" think 

[jlw10]

pls help - my lo is 21 weeks and he has been waking up @ 5:30 for the past months. he is on 4hrs EASY schedule since he was 3.5 months. he doesn't take long naps, usually 45min. this cause him to be extremely tired towards the end of the day that he would sleep sometimes for 2hrs starting @ 4PM. i would feed him @ 7PM and he usually goes to sleep by 8PM. he doesn't fall asleep right away when i put him down. i have to resort to paci often time. this morning he woke up @ 4:40AM after i tried the w2s @ 4:30AM ....  i tried to do pu/pd but in the end had to use the paci. he doesn't wake up in the middle of the nite which is great but i am hoping i can push his wake up time. should i feed him @ 5:30AM? i am afraid he will get used to wanting to eat if i feed him. also, if i do feed him, should i still feed @ 7AM? he eats a total of 30-32oz a day. i df @ 11PM, he usually takes between 4oz - 6oz. any advice/suggestion is appreciated!

[momwho?]

Pass the coffee cup ladies!  I take 2 milks, please.  I start my day at 5:00-5:30 as well with my darling son who is 8 months old.  I thought it was going to be a phase, but after reading your trials and posts, I am starting to accept my fate.  The only thing that keeps me sane these days is that he has a good nap in the afternoon and if I am really tired I can slip in a nap but that is a bad habit too because I go to work in 3 months and at 2:00 everyday at work I will want to have a nap at my computer desk.  Carter is cutting his two front teeth at the same time so I have been blaming everything on that new development but I can't use that for an excuse all the time.  He has been sleeping through the night for a while now and he goes to bed at 7:00-7:30 everynight.  I have a question, I have never really done the dream feed thing (ever) because he has slept the night but this 5 am thing just started about a month ago.  Is it too late you think for me to try using the dream feed to extend his morning sleep-in time?  or should I just keep my coffee timer set for 5:00 am??   

[legend_018]

yesterday morning my LO was up at 4:45am ahhhhhhhhh. She had a morning nap and although seemed tired never took the afternoon one. she was in bed by 6:30pm as I have been and she slept until 4am. I ended up feeding her as she really didn't even have her last bottle the night before. She than slept until 6am so that was nice for a change. Especially since she's been waking up at like 5am. even though usually if she wakes at 5am she's ready to nap at like 8am. this morning she didn't make it much past 10am and took a very long nap. Im not even trying for the afternoon nap today.