Is your baby or toddler waking up too early in the morning? You’re not alone! Early morning wake-ups are a common and often very frustrating sleep issue, and can be challenging to fix.
How Early is Too Early?
If your child is waking up between 6-7 a.m., know that this is perfectly normal. Anything before 6:00 a.m. is either an early morning wake-up or a night waking; and where one ends and the other begins is simply a matter of opinion. Regardless, the goal is the same: you want your child to be sleeping later!
So, what can you do if you’ve got an early riser on your hands?
Here are 8 Steps to Fix Early Morning Wake-ups:
1) Darken Up Your Child’s Room
Even the tiniest sliver of light in those early morning hours can be enough to rouse your child. Use blackout blinds and/or blackout curtains, tape the curtains to the wall, hang dark sheets or blankets, cover the window with tinfoil or garbage bags – anything you can to get the room as dark as possible.
2) Keep It Quiet
We do a lot of our REM sleep in the early morning hours, and REM sleep is very light sleep. So, the furnace kicking in, birds chirping, mom or dad getting up for work or for the gym – all these things can cause a wake-up. Try to prevent as many of these noises as possible and use a white noise machine to drown out the rest.
3) Stick to a Minimum Wake Up Time
If you start letting your child get up at 5 a.m., then they’re likely going to continue getting up at that hour because that’s where their body clock is stuck. Or worse yet, it might start sneaking earlier and earlier.
I recommend that you stick with at least a 6:00 a.m. minimum. So, if your child wakes up anytime before 6 a.m., treat it as you would if they woke in the middle of the night and it wasn’t time for a feed.
4) Try Not to Reward the Early Morning Wake-up
If the first thing that happens when your child wakes up is something very special to them, they could be waking up early in anticipation, looking for that special something.
Example #1: If baby’s very attached to breastfeeding (or the bottle), they could be waking up early looking for a feed. Even if you wait until 6 a.m. to go in, if the very first thing that happens is a feed, that could be encouraging them to continue waking up at this early morning hour.
Example #2: If you’re bringing your child into bed with you for another snooze or even just a cuddle, they might be waking up early looking for that.
Instead, try waiting at least 10 minutes before a feed and resist the urge to bring your child into bed with you.
5) Avoid Putting Your Child Down for their First Nap Too Early
If your child wakes up at 5 a.m. and you get her up at that time, she’s likely going to be pretty tired. And if you put her down for a nap the minute she’s showing (or telling) you she’s tired, the nap will act as an extension of the night – so she gets 10 hours at night, is up for maybe an hour and a half, and then goes back to bed to finish the night. So, it’s not even technically a nap – it’s a broken, or fragmented, night.
And that’s where your child can get stuck in a cycle of early to rise, early to nap, early to bed, repeat. If at all possible, try sticking to her regular naptime. If it’s too much of a push, you can put her down up to 30 minutes earlier.
6) Move Bedtime EARLIER
If your child is going to bed too late and becomes overtired, there’s a good chance they’ll have a more restless sleep, more wake-ups in the night, and/or an early morning wake-up.
Instead, try moving your child’s bedtime earlier by 30 minutes for three days. I know it’s hard to believe, but an earlier bedtime is one of the most common ways to solve early morning wake ups.
(And anytime your little one has a poor nap day, it’s a good idea to move bedtime earlier to try to make up for some of that lost sleep.)
7) Move Bedtime LATER
If you’ve ruled everything else out (including an earlier bedtime for at least three days), then you may have to consider trying a slightly later bedtime.
If your child’s getting too much daytime sleep, or if they fall on the lighter side of sleep needs (i.e. they only need 10-10.5 hours of nighttime sleep vs. 11-12), it may help to move bedtime a bit later.
When moving bedtime later, it’s best to do so gradually in order to prevent overtiredness. Try shifting your child’s entire sleep schedule later by 10 minutes every three days until it’s 30 minutes later than normal.
Keep in mind that it can take the body several weeks to fully adjust to changes in sleep patterns. If your child’s body clock has been stuck at 5-5:30 a.m. for quite some time, you may not see any change at first. Wait a couple of weeks and if a later bedtime is truly what your child needs, you should start to see them sleeping a bit later in the morning by the end of the second week.
8) Give it Time and Patience
Lastly, give it time and patience. Early mornings are one of the trickiest sleep issues to solve. I hope you find these steps helpful. But keep in mind that there are many contributing factors to any sleep issue and that each child is unique.
If you feel like you’ve tried everything, but nothing is working, then let’s hop on the phone and chat it out a bit further. I’ll help you discover what the underlying sleep issue is and how I can help you solve it.
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