but even i am starting to get tired of seeing ‘4:xx’ every morning when our human alarm clock decides she’s ready for action.
good thing she’s this cute.
at the risk of polluting the internet with more baby-sleep-drivel, i’m going to once again throw out a plea for advice from the veterans.
as it stands, we’re so close.
we did a very minimal amount of sleep training for naps and earlier nighttime wakeups, but after waking up 1-2x to eat for 8+ months, annabel pretty much fell into her current sleep pattern. this is:
2 naps – one at 9 and one at 2, both about 1 – 1.5 hours [less at day care]
asleep between 7 – 8 pm, though usually around 7:30 pm [bedtime routine starts at 6:30 – 7:00].
and
wakeup between 4 – 5:30 am — usually in the 4s. and then that’s it. no going back to sleep at all for any significant amount of time. i’d be willing to accept that she just isn’t tired, but i just have a feeling it isn’t enough sleep.
exhibit A [this morning, 7:00 am]:
thoughts?
is 7:30 pm – 4:30 am enough nighttime sleep for a 9 month old — and should i therefore try to move her bedtime later? should i [paradoxically] go for earlier? should i press harder with CIO? feed her and then leave the room until 6? just resign myself to BOB naps at sunrise? stop worrying about it because she’ll probably grow out of it?
15 Comments
9h at night plus 2h during the day = 11h = Not enough sleep, IMO. They’re also really long awake periods. At her age, Dyls rarely went for more than 2-3 hours in between sleeps (well, if she did, she was miss cranky-pants).
What’s her sleep like on the weekends, out of curiosity? Does she nap more to make up for her sleep debt?
My first suggestion would be to try and move her bedtime earlier. 6:30 perhaps? Maybe even 6? Maybe that will help her sleep until 5ish. That’s what Mark Weissbluth would recommend, right? 🙂
Give it a week or so to work, and then reassess and we can think about plan B. Hopefully that won’t be necessary though.
I agree sleep begets sleep! I’d her her to bed by 7 and see what happens. My kids always got 12-15 hours of sleep per day, including naps, at that age. But I had friends whose kids slept less.
4am is rough! My little guy has been waking somewhere around 5 bells since he was born, and suddenly he sleeps until 7am (he still wakes at 5, but usually feeds and then has 1-2 hours more of restless sleep. I respect other parents’ choices for their families, but I too am very weary of crying methods. My suggestion (per some book I read) is to set an alarm for one hour before Annabel’s morning wake up. Go in, do a dream feed (if she’ll accept) and see if you can get her to sleep a bit more. If it works, you can establish that feed and then spend 2-3 weeks weaning it. My sister had great luck with this strategy with her routine 5 am human alarm clock. Good luck. It’s hard, but I bet you’re just around the corner! My guy (8 months) still wakes 3-4 times a night, but that’s down from like 10, so we’ll take what we can get!
I’m with most of the previous posters and would suggest an earlier bedtime. I’d aim for 6:30 or 7 and see what happens. My daughter (now 9 years old) has always been a tremendous sleeper and an early riser, but I do remember those early months when it was a HUGE struggle to get her to bed "on time", which was before 7pm for the longest time. She still, today, sleeps from 8pm-6:30am (roughly). So, no, I don’t think 11 hours at her age is enough. Ultimately, she’s the one who will tell you, though. It’s a struggle to juggle work, dinner, and an early bathtime, especially when you throw baths into the mix, but having her be such a good sleeper was always worth it.
Good luck!
Clara’s been doing the same thing but around 5am. She typically wakes happy at this time but I am trying to avoid enforcing to her that this is the time we wake up for the day, ha. So I have done a few things. . . at times when she wakes I will go in and try to feed her. Sometimes she is hungry and will go right back to sleep. Sometimes she just wants to be up and play so it’s back in the crib she goes. I keep the lights off, noise maker on, etc so that she knows it’s not play time. If at 6am she is still awake then I will go get her to start our day. Then sometimes when she wakes at 5 I will just let her play in her bed until 6am. As long as she is happy and not screaming there is no reason in my opinion why I can’t let her hang out until 6.
Sleep is SO hard. Been a rocky process for us!!! I feel your pain and frustration! We struggle more overall with the first few hours into bedtime. Clara goes down about 8pm and then will wake around 9-10pm and be fussy for a while (usually not hunger, try to feed her and she won’t have it). Not sure what is going on here. Eventually we get her back to sleep and then she will sleep until 5-6ish.
It will suck the first night or two on you emotionally but the only thing i would change is to let her CIO if you think she is only waking up out of routine. She will give up, lay back down, and sleep. One night to break Greta’s habit at an early age I had to let her CIO for 40 mins, then poof the next day she slept right through that wake up and continues to now at 20 mo. She sleeps from 8 pm to 7 am. If she wakes before 640 am I proceed as if it was still middle of the night, sing a lullaby and lay her back down.
Thanks Jessica! I have been meaning to write you! We should do lunch soon!!
I agree w the above–F&H go to bed around 645/7 and (used to STTN, now sometimes wake once–working on CIO–ugh teething round 2) wake up at 615. They started transitioning to 2 daily naps, around 10ish and 2ish…usually one longer (1hr) and one shorter one (20-45min). They have gone to bed that early for a long time!
530: dinner, 6 bath/playtime, 630 QUIET time/last feeding, bed. Y, it really sucks that we have such limited time after work!!!!!!!!
I agree with others, earlier bedtime will probably help her (and you!). We have been trying to get luke to sleep longer in the am too because he wakes up about 5 or 5:30 (he goes to be about 6:30) but is super crabby. We did a modified version of cry it out with him when we were first sleep training and did a version of that too with his recent early morning wake ups. So, this morning, I actually had to wake him up at 7am to go to daycare! If you are interested in how we did cry it out, let me know. Good luck.
I agree that an earlier bedtime is worth a shot. At 14 months, E’s usually asleep by 7pm, but until at least a year old she was in the bath by 6pm and asleep by 6:30pm. E certainly doesn’t "sleep in" by normal standards, but she rarely gets up before 6am, and I imagine 6am sounds pretty heavenly to you right now!
E went through a stretch of getting up before 6am a couple months ago, and I tried the Weissbluth "don’t respond to her until 6am" tactic. Didn’t work. I think some kids are just wired to get up early, and probably go through phases when they wake up earlier and later. We even had a week long stretch of 7am (before her recent teething/ear infection/reactive airway disease trifecta of fun), so it’s always in flux.
I bet you get the most comments on posts about baby sleeping!! Everyone has an opinion. Honestly, what works for one baby (or family) doesn’t work for another.
We did things a little differently with our second, and both kids are "okay" sleepers. Neither one of them "slept through the night" until after 9 or 10 months. We let the first CIO and did a modification of that for the second. The second (13 months old) still comes in our bed in the morning occasionally around 5:15am so that we can sleep a little longer.
I’ve learned that you can’t MAKE kids eat, sleep, or potty. (You can try your best to train them…but they really are little people that can be quite stubborn) Do your best. Try a few different things and go with what works.
Good Luck!! 🙂
I also read and followed 12 hrs by 12 weeks. Awesome. Hewitt is 11mo and gets 15-16 hrs total sleep a day. 12 at night then 2 naps. You’re right– 4 am is not an ok wake up time 🙂 your sweetie just need help learning how to fall back asleep in the wee hours and it prob wont take long for her to do it. Check out that book. It took an hour to read, very helpful.
UGH Sarah, I am sorry.
This pretty much sounds like Wyatt. He’d go to bed by 7/7:30 but the he’d be UP up by 4:30/5. But by 9 mos, I literally couldn’t take it anymore and we did CIO. If he woke up before 5, I’d ignore him. After 5, I’d go change him and feed him during the early am wake-up and then I leave him crying in his crib. Most days he falls asleep for another hour or so. But some days he just doesn’t. And that’s still where we are at 13.5 months. I’ve tried making his bedtime earlier and later, but he does best when we honor his natural bedtime. Like you, I still suspect he isn’t getting enough sleep but I don’t know what else to do. I just think some babies are good sleepers, and some aren’t. There are no magic answers unfortunately. Sigh…
Good luck!
I listened to a podcast (I believe it was on New Moms New Babies) and the woman SWORE by a 6pm bedtime. She said it would solve all early waking problems. Of course that’s not always realistic, but it might be worth trying??
I agree with previous peeps who say her naps are too short and far apart. Also, if I were you, I would definitely 100% be doing CIO in the morning for those 4:XX wakeups. It will only take a few days and she’ll figure it out. Do a controlled comforting method when you go in to pat and shush every ten minutes, and then leave. Don’t pick up and do NOT feed.