Help!! My DD Wakes up when Husband Gets up for Work at 5 am

[Amber's Mum]

Can anyone help me?  My 4 ½ month old dd habitually wakes up at around 4 – 4:30 am every morning, but can usually get herself back to sleep so I don’t think it’s hunger.  On the weekend she will sleep until about 6:45 – 7:00 a.m.  But on the weekdays, it’s a different story. 

Her room is right next to ours, and my husband’s alarm clock rings at 5 am.  He presses snooze 3 times before getting up around 5:20 am.  He does not want to change this.  The cat then wakes up and meows while my husband takes his shower and gets ready for work.  He talks out loud to the cat.  All of this wakes up my dd every morning.  She can usually spend quite a bit of time being quietly awake or going between being awake and sleeping for 30 or more minutes.  Sometimes she will cry, but not often.  Most of the time, she will stay awake quietly or fuss.  But sometimes it progresses to a cry and then I have to get her up and shhh/pat her or do PU/PD.  Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.  The times it doesn’t, I’ve resorted to bringing her into my bed (I know, I know…)  We have been doing the BW for about 2 ½ weeks now using the 4 hour schedule.  Anybody have any ideas of how I can get her used to hearing my husband moving around and making noise, but letting her know it’s not time to wake up?  Thanks.

[Colin Macs Mom]

Personally, I think that your husband needs to keep it down and be respectful of the sleeping baby. I know that showers make noise and such, but he doesn't need to talk out loud to the cat.

[Amber's Mum]

Oops, sorry I didn't mean to imply that he is really loud and disrespectful, he's not.  He's just going about his business not wanting to tiptoe too much and I can understand that.  Afterall, he does have the right to move about and make some noise. He thinks I'm overreacting  and teaching her to only sleep in dead silence, which is not realistic, especially since we want to have another child. soon    I agree.  I'm just not sure how to teach my lo that despite other people being up and moving about, she still has to sleep or at least stay in her crib until a more reasonable hour like 6:30 or 7:00, which is what she does on the weekends.  What do other mothers do when there are people in the house who wake early?

[Colin Macs Mom]

Sorry, maybe I read too much into what you posted?

We have a similar situation actually. Our house is small, and DS's room is also next to ours. We have only one bathroom and it's on the other side of our room, so not far from DS's at all.      He used to wake when our alarm went off in the morning, so we moved it to the other side of our room, on my side of the bed, and turned the volume down as low as possible. That works fine since I'm not a heavy sleeper, so I hear it and then wake DH. Of course we keep the bathroom door shut so the getting-ready noise is minimized, but DS often does hear something and stir. He often just goes back to sleep now, but but always. It did take a lot of days of going in and resettling him though, to teach that it wasn't time to get up.

[Amber's Mum]

Excellent, thanks for the advice  .  I'll move the alarm clock and will keep trying shhh/pat and PU/PD until she gets the message.  It helps to know other people have experience similar things, if only babies would do exactly what we wanted them to do...! 

[Colin Macs Mom]

I know, and with a small house there's only so much that can be done. But moving the alarm clock and turning the volume down really helped us a lot.

[CLJK]

You may want to invest in a white noise machine.  We LOVE LOVE LOVE ours:  http://www.therapyshop.com/screens/screendetail.asp?ProductsID=6

It really helps mask the noises going on outside baby's room.  We turn ours to high when he is falling asleep and for naps, and then I turn it to low for overnight.  LO's room is right next to our bathroom, so the shower noise can be pretty loud.  My 3 YO has one, too, although I don't think he even needs it - it's more out of our habit as I work from home and don't want may office calls to wake him (but nothing short of a firecracker will wake him these days).  Some people disagree about white noise, but it has given me so much peace of mind to protect his precious sleep.  Plus it's small enough to pack away for trips.

[Colin Macs Mom]

How's it going now Claire?

[Sydney]

I agree with the white noise machine. We don't have one as we use a fan AND a humidifer in the winter, but would purchase one if we didn't use these other things.  I have heard great things about them.

[gabbysmommy]

Claire...I'm sorry but I can't stop laughing about your post.  That sounds exactly like our house!  Especially the cat part.  Our cat always  meows at us when we get up and my husband also pushes snooze several times.  He also clears his throat loudly and uses an electric toothbrush that is noisy.  He has also said that our baby should learn to sleep with noises going on.  I'm going to check out the noise machine.