Hellobee Boards

I have to limit my 2.5 year-old's nap to 1 hour. Any longer and whatever I let him go over comes off of the morning. And even when nap is only an hour, I max get 10 hours of night sleep. Been this way since 18 months, and I experimented with a lot of things before cutting down on nap.

I would try limiting nap to 1.5 and pushing bedtime to maybe 8:30, but I think this may just be one of those "phases" that only time will help.
M is also waking early the last week or so, and I think it's a combo of her molars coming through and being summer, it's light out at like 5am.

Could you move her nap earlier so that you don't have to cut the nap short, but that she will have a longer stretch of time between nap and bedtime?

@Foodnerd81: he's almost 19 months so very young for it, but has very good receptive language. We did spend a lot of time explaining it and I'm sure he understands. Yesterday morning I saw him on the monitor standing there all quietly, and then as soon as it turned yellow he shouted 'dada!!' (Daddy is currently doing most mornings!) I thought it couldn't hurt, even if he ended up not understanding at first!

Ugh, that sucks!! We had a MOTN wake up too, which is very rare except for the last few days. I honestly feel it's a phase and I'm just going to keep keeping on in the hopes that things resolve themselves on their own. And for the nap thing, it always takes mine about a week to adjust to any new sleep schedule so I'd keep doing it for a week or so and see where you're at. Sorry you had a rough night!

@Foodnerd81: oh that is too cute! I feel like whenever lo has a phase of early waking, it is during some crazy development period or teething. The difference being when it's developmental she wakes to practice, and when it's teething she wakes up crying. Of course right after i tell you this period is developmental for her, she woke up hysterical this morning out of nowhere! Dh said her tummy hurt, who knows though. Troubleshooting is rough.

I'm sorry she had such a bad night. I've noticed that ever since i weaned, i have a hard time getting back to sleep after being woken. My nursing superpowers are gone! I'm sure pregnancy doesnt help

@Foodnerd81: I just came on to basically write the EXACT post you wrote. (down to the queen bed, pregnant, and blackout curtains). These 4:30 wake ups are killing me. Has it gotten any better? Any great tips you can share?

We've been dealing with 4:30am wake ups off and on for about 8 months. It totally sucks. I know it has nothing to do with sunrise because he was doing it in December when the sun didn't rise until 8am, so blackout shades won't help. And he has an early bedtime 6:30/7pm, but when we push it back he still wakes at 4:30. The only thing that sort of seemed to help was limiting his daytime nap, but he is in daycare so we have no control over that during the week. But it doesn't even work consistently. I notice that he tends to sleep a little later when he's had a more active day, we go to the beach most weekends and it's a clear difference when the weather is nice and he can be more active outside vs. when it rains all day and we are house bound. For example this past weekend was 90 and sunny and he slept in till 6:40/7 both mornings but the last time we were there it was chilly and rainy and he woke up at 4:39/5am. Nothing else was different!