Breaking the 5 am habbit?

My DD has been a pretty good sleeper both day and night since she was about 9 months old or so. From about 13 months she went down to 1 long day nap and sleeping over night.

She is just about to turn 16 months and has taken to waking up between 4-5am in the mornings for the last week or so which is really draining for both DH and I as I am 7 months pg and still working 2 1/2 days a week and DH works too.
I am not sure what to do to break the habit so far we have tried
* Putting her to bed later anytime between 6:30-9 and still same get up time
*Putting new curtains up to make her room darker
* Letting her sleep longer during the day
*Letting her sleep less during the day
*Giving her 2 days sleeps instead of 1
*Giving her more to eat at night
*Offering her a bottle when she wakes up incase she is hungry
*Going in to resettle her
*ignoring her

I just cant think of what else I can do to encourage her to sleep longer, she has never slept much past 6:30, but 6:30 is a darn sight better than 4 am. I know that she is not 'ready' to get up this early because she is usually so cranky by aout 7:30, where as before she before she would sleep to 6:30 and be quite happ untill her nap time at about 11:30-12.

Does anyone have any ideas of what else I could try?

Hi Ali,
Darlin it looks like you have covered everything you could cover there.... by her age it could possibly be her molers coming through too.... good old toofy pegs!! That was the first thing that came to my mind so i thought I would mention it :)
Sounds like the russling up of the old Grin and bear it till she gets over it.....
:hugs:

Thanks Kristie I am starting to think the same thing, she has just cut her first set of molars so whether there are more teething coming as well I am not sure. I guess I should be greatful that it is between 4-5 and not like 1 am.

EVERYONE seems to be having this prob at the moment!!! Wierd!

I would love to be able to give you some suggestions but it really does look like you have covered everything and I can't get my baby to sleep past 4am LOL!
Just wanted to wish you good luck with getting DD to sleep through again before your next bubba comes along.
I'll be very interested to see if any other mums have some suggestions for you.

for the last week and a half Archie has ben getting up between 5-6 too, it is driving us mad, i am just hoping that Daylight savings will kick in soon and fix the problem!

Yeap same prob here with both my rugrats. Ned is waking at 4.30am (can usually stretch this 'tl 5 though) and Lucie at about 5.20am. Anything after 5am is ok, I can handle, but before that is just madness. So many other mums I've spoken to are having the same prob. Bring on daylight savings.....

Ali... this sounds exactly like me too! Right down to the fact I'm 7 months pregnant too!
My son is 16.5 months...

We moved into a new house... and every night he has woken between 4-5am.
His molars are coming through... you can see two of them breaking through.

Last night I put some bonjella on his dummy, and he actually slept right through. mind you... he struggled to go to sleep - and didn't go down until 9.30-10pm.

To make it worse... I'm trying to unpack boxes, renovate our kitchen & Shaun woke up with gastro today. been spewing all day & can't keep water down :(

I hope for all of us that this stage passes soon. I need all the sleep I can get!

Ali i have this probelm with Kimberley and Eleanor has started to wake at 3am for a hour. I just get hr back to sleep and get a hours more sleep before Kimberley wakes.
Hopefully when daylight savings start this will change back to 6am wake up.

I have the same problem. 5am seems to be the norm at the moment for wake up times.

I hope it passes soon too

Yep, DLS.

She may not be able to see the light through the curtains, but she may be able to hear the birds. That's what wakes Daniel up - the birds whistling. If DLS doesn't come soon we will be having roast bird for breakfast, lunch and tea.

Hi there, I just wanted to add one more to your list LOL and that is cold, with the colder weather coming in you may find that she is cold. The 5am wake up is generally for this reason as it is when it is generally coldest for them. They wake every 40minutes because of their sleep cycles so if they wake and they are cold, they wake up more and then think it is time to get up for the day.

Try a sleeping bag and see if this helps.

The only other thing is that it could be that she is getting close to drop a day nap, and when this happens they start waking early for a couple of months and then start sleeping in again when the nap has been dropped.