Early Rising help?

honeydew01

Does anyone have LOs who wake up between 5 to 6:30 am, eat and then sleep for another hour? 

I am trying to get DD to sleep til at least 7 am. This is because she takes 2 naps, usually they are an hour to 1.5 hour long and she is awake 2.5 hours between the naps so when she wakes up super early we are screwed with an overtired baby by 3-4 pm!

She wakes up between 5 to 6:30 am, totally alert but tired. When she is up and rested she is all cheery, doesn't cry, just lays there and babbles but when she wakes up early she cries. I go in and nurse her and usually she falls back sleep for another hour. This is totally ok with me when she nurses and falls back sleep for that extra hour to hour and half but when she doesn't fall back sleep and we start the day early is when we are screwed or I am Is there anything I can do?

Btw this has been going on for months so it doesn't have anything to do with the daylight savings (at least I don't think so). Her room is super dark and we use a noise machine so she wouldn't hear my DH taking a shower in the morning...she also wakes up another time, (anywhere between 12 - 4) and I feed her. She is 8 months old and ped says she doesn't need to eat in the middle of the night, but it's the one nursing session where she actually nurses well so I have not stopped feeding her in the middle of the night..anyway my point is that I don't think she is hungry when she wakes up at 5-6 am...

Thanks!

LisaLisa1980

I'm on month 3 of sleep issues. He used to get up between 6-7, sometimes 8, but now it's 5-6. It sucks.

Pitterpatter44

Since she's alert at 6am, have you tried doing more than just nursing? My LO gets up at 6ish, she eats (bottle) then plays for about 30 mins while my H and I get dressed and I make out breakfast. LO eats some fruit and oatmeal with us, plays for a few more mins, until she starts to get sleepy ( about 90 mins after she first wakes up). I can then easily get her down for a nap, which is a lot of times 2.5 to 3 hrs. My point being, maybe just get her up, get some play time in, wear her out a bit, and maybe she will sleep later in the morning (making it her first nap). It sucks having to get up that early, but might make it worth it if she's not as grouchy by end of day.

For what it's worth though, I think many babies are just grouchy by late afternoon/evening no matter what, so don't be too hard on yourself over it!

honeydew01

adl3399 said:

Since she's alert at 6am, have you tried doing more than just nursing? My LO gets up at 6ish, she eats (bottle) then plays for about 30 mins while my H and I get dressed and I make out breakfast. LO eats some fruit and oatmeal with us, plays for a few more mins, until she starts to get sleepy ( about 90 mins after she first wakes up). I can then easily get her down for a nap, which is a lot of times 2.5 to 3 hrs. My point being, maybe just get her up, get some play time in, wear her out a bit, and maybe she will sleep later in the morning (making it her first nap). It sucks having to get up that early, but might make it worth it if she's not as grouchy by end of day. For what it's worth though, I think many babies are just grouchy by late afternoon/evening no matter what, so don't be too hard on yourself over it!

Yeap sometimes I have no choice, if she's awake at 6 she's awake at 6. The problem is that she goes down for her first nap 2 hours after waking up (used to be 90 min before) and she has never taken a 3 hour nap. Almost all her naps are an hour long, sometimes 90 minutes. Between nap 1 and nap 2, she's up for 2.5 hours and then takes another 1 hr nap. So if you do the math, we're done with naps at 12:30 to 1ish. That is a long time until her bedtime! She refuses a third nap, even if we take her for a car ride or stroller ride..so yea on days she wakes up super early we are pretty screwed. We try to put her to bed very early but even then she is overtired and ends up not sleeping great through the night...

luvmygirlss

Few suggestions:

First, what time is bedtime? if it's early, she may be meeting her sleep requirements.  

Early morning wake ups are usually considered anything less than 10 hours of ONS. If she is sleeping 10hrs or less then what is happening is that her nighttime sleep is getting broken up and she is waking early knowing that you will come in and feed her back to sleep. She may in fact at times be hungry. If you believe she is, it is perfectly fine to feed her, just make sure you lay her down awake so that she could fall back asleep on her own. That way it doesn't become a habit of you going in every morning at 5am and feeding her back to sleep. 

Her nighttime sleep can also be broken up if her first morning nap of the day is too early. She wakes up because she knows (or at least her biological rhythm knows) that she will get a nap within an 1/1.5hrs. If she knew she wasn't getting that nap, she would conserve her energy and sleep a little longer. SO basically, Continuous early naps can re-set her internal clock and break up her sleep and cause her to wake early.

Another issue is that towards the morning hours, most commonly between 3.am-5am, sleep is the lightest. We start the night off by cycling through more "deep sleep" cycles as the night goes on we spend more and more time in "light sleep" cycles. So naturally your baby will wake at that hour and if she doesn't know how to fall back asleep on her own, in combination with the fact that she knows you will just come in and do it for her if she fusses a little, this can cause a early morning waking.

Which brings me to my next point. If she has slept less than 10hrs ( Even if she sleeps more than that, you can still try) and wakes very early in the morning, wait a little and let her fuss, to see if she will fall back asleep. If she begins crying at that point you would treat it as you would a middle of the night wake-up which means using a sleep method of your choice. 

Hope that makes sense. Good luck 

honeydew01

@luvmygirlss, thanks for your reply it was helpful!

She goes to be at 7 to 7:30 usually but we are still transitioning from 3 to 2 naps so some days when she is up super early and doesn't take long naps we are done with naps early and she is too exhausted to keep her up to 7 to 7:30 so we've put her down earlier like 6:30. I've read that doing this temporarily  when they are transitioning helps them catch up on sleep and is not the cause of them waking up super early. I have found no correlation between her going to be at 6:30 or 7:30 and waking up early. 

I have waited and given her time when she wakes up say at 5 and sometimes she just babbles, fusses a minute or two then rolls and sleeps. Other times she does the same but instead wakes up instead of going back down so it's like a gamble to me...do I rush in and get her on the boob so she'd go back to sleep or let her figure it out and decide if she wants to sleep more or not. She does know how to put herself back to sleep, we put her in the crib awake. The one other time she wakes up (between 1 to 4), she is truly hungry and I feed her. 

luvmygirlss

if she does know how to fall asleep on her own at that time and has done so, then it seems she may be testing you to see if you will come in and nurse her back to sleep. Milk has a sleep inducing effect so naturally she will fall right back to sleep without much effort on her part. If she falls back to sleep sometimes on her own then she obviously can make it that long without needing to feed again, so I would try to keep that in mind. When she wakes don't rush in and assume she's hungry. Let her try to fall back asleep. Also, studies show that just delaying the gratification and not giving the feeding right away for a few days is sometimes enough stop the early morning waking. Good luck!