Need help... 4.30am starts are killing me...

[Miss E]

So, in recent months DS has started waking earlier and earlier. We're at the point where he is waking up at 4.30am (4.45am if we're lucky) every day. It doesn't matter if he goes to bed at 6pm or 8pm, he still wakes up at the same time. He sleeps really well through the night and rarely stirs. But come 4.30am it's a different story. I've tried everything, from BF'ing, bringing him to bed with us, settling him the way we do if he wakes during the night, to even letting him grizzle, and nothing works. He is wide awake and ready to start the day

I'm at a complete loss for what we can do. The only thing I can think of is forcing him to go down to one nap a day in the hope that it might reset his body clock... At the moment he's still having 2 naps (he's always been very slow to drop sleeps) and it is very common for them to just be 30mins (probably about 50%) of the time. Sometimes I'm able to rock him back to sleep and others I can't. At the moment he's lasting about 5 hours between sleeps, so if I could get him to sleep till say 6.30am, then one nap a day would probably do it for him...

So do you think I should force it for a week and see what happens? I've always been very reluctant to force routine changes on him, I usually let him set the pace, but at the moment I'm struggling to keep up.

Or, do you have a better idea? Or should I just hold out till daylight savings comes...

[ss_storm]

we had a couple of mornings of 5am wake ups and then quite a few nights where she would wake at say 3am and refuse to go back to sleep until 5am
It could just be a phase he is going through, hopefully he stops it soon if it is! You could probably try only giving one sleep a day, but he might just get overtired instead?

Good luck hun, for your sake I hope he starts waking at a decent hour soon!

[Santosha]

Hmmm these bubbas are ganging up on us! There's been at least 2 other threads around about this in the past week, and my DD has started waking early too... methinks their little bodies are waking up from 'winter mode' and getting up earlier with the sun (although your little guy is beating the sun by a fair bit)! Chinese medicine has held for centuries that our bodies cycle with the seasons and we need different amounts of sleep, have different dietary, work and energy patterns depending on the time of year. I think we as adults tend to 'tune out' of our bodies natural cycles, but our little ones are far more sensitive. Spring is in the air... it's just hard to feel it when you've been up since 4:30am!

My DD is a little older and I can fairly easily get her to have one sleep or 2, just depending on our routine. At least for us, number or length of naps makes no difference to her wake up time at all. Same as you... late night or early one, big day or quiet one.
She went through a phase like this at about 12 months (again coming in to a change of season) and I had some limited success with
- not giving her a big brekkie until 7:30 so that her body was not waking up 'expecting' food 'till then. If she asked I'd just give her BM or a little bit of toast / cracker.
- sometimes if I brought her into bed and completely ignored her (pretended to be asleep) she'd just play for an hour and go back to sleep. This only worked occasionally and more often resulted in me getting up as i was sick of getting a finger up my nose or my head sat on, but the few times it did work, she'd go back to sleep for at least 2 hours - convincing me that she definitely needed a longer sleep overnight. She however was not convinced... until a few weeks into Winter really set in and she decided to start sleeping 12.5 - 14 hours overnight (often not getting up 'till 8:30 and occasionally 9).

Good luck! Hope you get some more ZzzzZzzs soon.

[amberj]

I feel your pain. My DS has been waking up very early, 5-5:30, for the past month or so. A few mornings it was closer to 4:30. Its awful. I feel tired all the time and am grumpy all the time too!

I too have tried everything. The only thing that works even a tiny bit is for us to leave some toys in DS's room so he can have a bit of a play when he wakes up. He can last sometimes 30 minutes, which at least lets us doze a bit more. Would your DS do ok with some toys in the cot?

I'm not sure about the idea of cutting down to one nap. I've done some research on this early waking, and the general consensus seems to be that the more tired they are, the worse they sleep and the earlier they wake up. Its that whole 'sleep breeds sleep' thing, and it seems to be true. So if you think cutting down to one nap will make him more tired, I'm not sure its going to work. Of course, its worth a try for a week, but I'm not convinced. I've tried limiting DS's day sleeps, and it's made a little bit of difference, but not heaps.

You have my deep sympathy. Lets pray that daylight savings brings a change.

[Winter]

Hi hun, big hugs as this is a terrible stage! My DD went through it and we barely survived it! Luckily she is now sleeping to around 6.15/ 6.30 on a good day and 7.00 on a really good day! I think they just grow out of it. Keep the sleeps up, if your DS needs 2 sleeps its better to let him have them than fight a grumpy & tired toddler. Can you go back to sleep when he does for his morning nap?

[ss_storm]

I knew I shouldn't have said anything...I jinxed myself and DD was awake from 3am to 5am this morning, then finally went to sleep and was wide awake at 7am on the dot!