Early waking

[mjemma]

Help! My 14 month DS wakes up at 5-5.30am and I cannot get him back to sleep.

He has always been a terrible sleeper but we did controlled crying (going in every 5mins) when he was 10 months and it worked really well. But we have tried it in the mornings and it has no effect. He just stands up in the cot and screams.

He now goes down at 6.30pm quite easily and sleeps through but he is waling up progressively earlier, some mornings by 4.45.

I am totally out of ideas. I have tried blackout blinds, later bedtime, later breakfast, giving him milk, brining him into our bed, giving him toys to play with. I can't bring myself to just leave him as he literally screams non-stop but would love to hear any other ideas.

His naptimes in the day seem to make no difference and when I am put him down a bit later he tends to wake up earlier.

Anyone else had this problem and any tips?

 

[mommysbaby]

I personally did not face this but have seen people who have early risers.
One little boy in DD's play group wakes up at 5:30 n he is down by 7:30. He is now 30 months. His parents tried everything to delay his waking up but nothing worked. So she was saying that they made peace with it and shortened their own day as much as possible...
This must be tiring but if possible try doing the same thing so that u also will get some rest.

 

[chickenlegs]

Billy is an early riser - between 4.30 and 5.30. He has always been the same and he is now 26 months. We tried everything too and eventually just resigned ourselves to the fact that he was just going to get up early. It was proving more stressful trying different methods, all of which failed. We just go to bed early now!

 

[PoppyPainting]

I have a lo who;s an early riser. I have managed to move wake up time from 4 to 6am by moving each of the key markers in the day by 5 mins every few days. So the things that tell lo's body what the time is such as each mealtime, bathtime and her favourite TV programme (I recorded it). I had to write myself a list of times and be really consistent. I'd like her to get up later again but she has a 10 hour sleep at night and if she goes to bed after 8pm I get no time with dh on our own.

 

[jd83]

Unfortunately some kids are consistent early wakers no matter what you do. Both of my kids are usually up around 6am no matter what time I put them to bed. I could put them to bed at 7pm, or 10pm, and they'd still be up at the crack of dawn. DS2 woke up at 3:30am this morning and thought it was playtime We ended up bringing him into bed with us to try and get a little more sleep, but he just kept crawling over us back and forth, so after an hour of that, I put him back in his room again, and he cried for a few minutes and finally went back to sleep. But by this point it was so close to time to get up for work, it was kind of a wasted effort...