My 8 month old is on a 5 am wake schedule. It has been several weeks now. I am worried that she is not getting enough sleep (she goes down around 7 - usually up once to nurse in the night) and I miss my sleep as well. Anyone else have any experience with a very early riser? Anything I can do to change this or do I just need to sleepily embrace it?
To respond to some of the questions I have gotten (THANK YOU, Ladies)...I have tried bringing her into bed to nurse and fall back to sleep and/or quietly going in and nursing her to try to get her back to sleep but NOPE, she is up! She doesn't really cry when she wakes and I have left her in the hopes that she will go back to sleep but it is a NO GO. She is tired though. This morning she went back to bed at 6:30 and slept for another 45 minutes. Maybe the light is bothering her because right now it is getting light at 5 am.
Well, I did do/try several things: First, I have been working to improve my daughter's sleep schedule. I also read the "No Cry Sleep Solution". Her naps are improving, much longer and more consistent. I also moved UP the time that she goes to bed (from 7:30 to 7). She now sleeps consistently past 5:30 and we are working our way to 6 (and sleeping through the night - at least for the past 2 nights). I will take that! AND I put up some room-darkening curtains in her room. I really do appreciate everyone's input. THANK YOU!
Have you tried room darkening shades? You could be right that the early sun rises are waking her up.
My son, now 7, has always been an early riser. I embraced it--we went for early morning walks almost every day and let my daughter and husband sleep in. It was great together time and got me out and walking, since I didn't want to wake up the rest of the house that early.
both my boys are early risers. I am so not a morning person. They are now 5 and 3 and still wake up about 6am every morning, regardless of what time they go to sleep at night. (room darkening shades didnt make a difference)However, now that they are older, they get up, make breakfast and usually play in their rooms or play downstairs. Although it nearly killed me the past 5 years,now I am getting to sleep in til about 7 or 730am.
Hello-
My little boy is not a big sleeper either (@ 8mo he would sleep between 11-13hrs/day). We have moved his bed time later so he is not up with the sun. Currently he goes down between 9-9:30 at night and will sleep till 6-6:30, which believe me is much better than the down @ 7:30 and up between 4:30-5 AM! His doctor says each baby has their own normal for sleeping, I have found out the hard way you can not force a baby to sleep when they are not tired!!!
Best of Luck!
Hang something in her window, even if it look ugly, just something to make it dark and see if she sleeps longer. When my 10 month old girl wakes up at 6:00 am, I nurse her and then I put her back in her bed, sometimes she falls asleep but usually she just lays there or plays or talks for about an hour and then wants out. It lets me go back to sleep. Also when I get her up I let her play on the floor while I lay on the couch.
it could very well be the light. my 2 yr old woke about that time once this week and argued with me that it was time to get up because the sun was up. well it WAS pretty light in his room. i did get him back to sleep by playing music and he slept an hour later than he normally would. i'm going to be making curtains this week to go over the blinds and avoid this happening all summer.
We had a son who did that. I ended up nursing him and bringing him to bed with me, and he'd usually sleep another two hours. It didn't cause other sleeping problems for him. He was the snuggly kind, and I ended up getting more done in a day because some of his snuggles were already filled.
My 9 month old does the same. Do you let her fuss a bit to see if she will drift back to sleep? Mine often does if I leave him alone for a bit. It could also be a growth spurt and she does need to eat. If she'll take a bottle, try giving her 4 or so oz. (leave her in the crib) and let her drift back to sleep. This works like a charm through a growth spurt, and keeps them sleeping till 7 (or so) in the morning. Hope this helps.
My son was on a kick with waking at 5 AM too. The best thing that worked for us was to leave him in his crib for at least an hour. If he started getting really aggravated and crying pretty good, then I would go to him and start the day. So as long as she is quiet, leave her in the crib. Another thing I did was stick to his regular 9AM nap. He would be pretty tired by 8, but I would keep him to the 9AM. Babies get conditioned so quickly, I didn't want him thinking that waking early meant an earlier nap in the morning.
We also started putting little toys in his crib to keep him occupied in the morning if he gets up early. Like little stuffed animals. This will help keep your baby quiet if she wakes early.
My son grew out of it, hopefully yours will too!
I have the same problem. My advice, get up, have the coffee ready and enjoy your time with your precious daughter! Early risers don't change. They're only little once.
personally, i would let her alone. if she's awake, she can have time entertaining herself or learning how to go to sleep. as for nighttime nursing, i would stop that too. if she realizes that you're not going to get up with her, she'll teach herself how to fall back to sleep.
Put her to bed later --- maybe 8 pm. Work your way to it. 15 minutes later each night. Make sure her room is cool and dark. Blinds and/or curtains. Give her a blankie or stuffed animal as a lovey. Have soothing music. Our 19 month old has been getting up early. We give him a bottle of milk or water and sometimes even bring him into bed with us and he goes back to sleep. Good luck.
Honey, you are letting her go down at 7pm...she's getting TEN hours of sleep by 5am...even if she's awake to nurse, she's getting a long stint in. Maybe you stall her going to bed so early at this time. (I'm all for an early bedtime...our children go to bed at 7:30, except our baby girl, we'll move her to an earlier bedtime as time goes by)
I think you're onto something with the light. Blacken her windows with some newspaper, thicker drapes, or if the window is not anywhere near her crib put up light filtering blinds.
The other thing is if she's happy in her crib at that time in morning, why rush in to get her...just let her play and have alone time...if it's safe for her to sleep there all night it should be safe for her to happily hang out in there for a little while, right?
Every suggestion is good and will work....sometimes. And then there are those kids that are just early risers, my youngest (21 months) is my worst and it started around 7/8 months old also, all of mine did it at some point but putting them back in bed with me would work just fine, even if they didn't go to sleep I could at least lay there and dose. My youngest was UP at 5 no way around it so most mornings I would be laying on the floor while he played, even put up a baby gate so that if I did dose off I knew he would be fine cause my living room was at the time completely baby proof, know he gets up between 6-6:30 no matter what, I thought it was because the kids were getting up for school (he still woke up earlier then them) but school has been out for 2 weeks so that wasn't it. I won't complain it's better the 5 a.m but I could never turn his clock around, changing naps didn't help, adjusting bed time's didn't help, like it had with the others, I just had an early riser. Hope you can get an idea, so you can get some sleep, but you might want to resign yourself to the fact that he is an early rise, which will be nice once he hits school age!
C.,
My daughter did the same thing for a while. She was up early, for about an hour or so, then back down for a "nap." I figured the naptime just counted as part of her sleeping. If she won't go back to bed, I would just cope through it as best you can. After a while, my daughter got over it and condensed everything back down to a straight-through night's sleep.
If you think the light is bothering her, you can get some blackout lining from Walmart. They come on a roller shade and pull down right behind your curtain. You could also try just tacking a dark-colored blanket over her windows for a week or so and see if this is the problem before you buy blackout blinds. They help my kids when they are going to bed and it's still light outside.
Best of luck,
S.
put her to bed later
that is a simple fix.
cut back to only two naps a day for no longer than 2 hours
Often when children are going through a new stage (crawling, walking, etc.) they have more disturbed sleep - sometimes just shorter. My daughter did this too. She'd wake early for a few days in a row, and then sleep a little later one or two mornings, then it would start again. She finally settled on a wake up time of 6:20-6:45 am, and she's now two years old.
As long as she is getting two naps a day, and bedtime at 7pm, I do believe she'll be fine with that amount of sleep. Seems like as soon as you think your little one has settled into a "schedule" they always change it up on you!
Does she cry when she awakens - so you need to go in and get her up? Or will she stay in her crib and "play" or maybe even fall back to sleep? If you feed her at 5am, and stay very quiet as to not get her energy up, will she sleep again? At 5am, it's still dark, so I won't even ask about sunlight getting to her in the early a.m.! :)
Good luck - and if you need to, take care of yourself too and go to bed a little bit earlier so that your energy stays up too... especially since you're nursing. Hang in there!
