Ending the early morning waking spell

This one hits home!

I felt inspired to write about ‘early morning wakings’ as I am currently working on this with my 10 month old twin boys. I’ve been right there with you praying for 10 more minutes!

The first thing you should know about early morning wakings is that they can be a toughie to work on but not impossible. That’s because after 9-10 hours of sleep, the sleep pressure that has gotten your little one through the night is no longer there. That means wakings in the wee hours can be difficult to get back to sleep from if they have not fully mastered comfortable, confident, independent sleep skills. To be honest, there are many different reasons your baby may be waking early so let’s try to figure them out together.

 Firstly let’s establish what is an ‘early morning waking’ and what is normal and acceptable with our little ones. Newborns 0 to 4 year old require 10-12 hours of night sleep while the amount of day sleep varies based on their age (Get a copy of our Sleep by Age chart HERE). Therefore an early morning wake up would be a child waking anytime before 10 hours of night sleep. There is a range of normal between 10-12 hours, so having said that, if your child is waking after 10 hours and is energetic and in a good mood you can assume they are just simply 10 hour baby. However if your child wakes up after 10 hours and still seems sleepy, grumpy or can’t make it to their first nap, then they probably need an extra hour or two of sleep (silver lining). 

 As mentioned, there are many different reasons your child may be waking early and so this is the order I would try to address the possible causes;

1. There may be too much light coming into the room in the morning, signaling to your child it’s morning time and it’s time to get up.
2. Your child is over or under tired at bedtime. If naps aren’t great (especially the afternoon nap) and you suspect your child is overtired at bedtime, try bringing bedtime earlier by 15 minutes. If this results in your child now waking even earlier after a week of trying, then push bedtime back to the original time for a few days and then try pushing bedtime later by 15 minutes later for a week. If you push bedtime later and they are still waking early then keep bedtime the original time. * Note; if you set bedtime earlier and your child still wakes at the same ‘original early time’ as with the original bedtime, keep bedtime earlier since this allows for some extra ZZZs.
3. Too much or too little day sleep. Check our sleep chart to make sure your child is getting the right amount of sleep for their age. 
4. Your little one is not comfortable and confident with theirs sleep skills and is still dependent on a sleep prop to get themselves back to sleep. Try putting your little one in their crib more awake and less drowsy at bedtime. If your child is over 6 months, move the last feed to the start of the bedtime routine to ensure they do not have an association to being fed to sleep.
5. The first nap of the day is too early. The first nap of the day should always be set based on the desired wake times (DWT) and not based on the time your child actually wakes up. Setting it based on the time they are actually waking can reinforce the early morning waking. This one is definitely tricky to adjust since your little one will be tired and cranky. Have a plan with lots of activities to keep them up till nap time. If their first nap has been happening an hour before it should be, you can work up to the new time by pushing 15 minutes every couple of days. 
6. Your little one has become accustomed to waking and feeding at this time. Try not to start their day before the DWT time if you can help it. Also try breaking up the feed by changing your little one first before offering a feed.
7. Lastly, your little one may simply be a 10 hour sleeping baby! Therefore, if your little one goes to sleep at 7pm and is continuously waking at 5:00 or 5:30 am after trying everything above, and is happy and can make it to nap time then they only require 10 hours of sleep. It happens! If waking at this time is inconvenient for you, you can adjust their whole schedule by making everything later by half an hour to an hour. Bottom line is to cut that movie short and get into bed early yourself!

If you have checked all of these things and you are still struggling with early morning wakings feel free to book a consultation with myself or Marie at the Dream Team. We’ve got some secret tricks up our sleeves to help work everything out. 

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