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Sleep is a freaking mystery. My DD went from sleeping 13+ hours, then 12ish when we potty trained her. Just recently she started waking up at around 4:30am! (10.5 hours) Omg! I have no idea what's going on with her brain and body, but hoping she starts sleeping well again. It's making me cranky.

My son has always been an early bird and regularly woke up around 5. And when he wakes up, he is awake and ready to go. He started outgrowing it around 12 months. Now he usually wakes up between 6 and 6:30. He is a very restless sleeper from around 3 on - tosses and turns a lot. I think his little body is still trying to figure the sleep thing out.

Honestly, if my son would have taken a bottle at that time and gone back to bed, I would have done it with without looking back, but it was clear he was up for the day. Trust me, if I could have gotten him back asleep I would have rather gone that route!

charlie would wake up around 5:30 until he was almost 2 i think. he was an early riser that slept 10 hours at night. he grew out of it though.... we usually have to wake him up at 8 now! alas it did take a while to get there!

Early wakings are the devil! We went through this a couple times, most recently a couple weeks ago with the time change/moving/transition to 1 nap, so we had a lot going on. I was given some advice to just not respond right away and try waiting- so I waited until at least 6am for a few days in a row, then 6:15am. LO was never hysterical so I felt fine doing that. I have been told that if you do not want LO waking up before a certain time, you should try your best to not feed them until the desired wake up time (age appropriate of course- and at 12/13 months they really do not need a night feed).

I was doing the same thing as you prior to her waking up for the day around 5/5:30. She would wake at 5/5:30, I would feed her, then she would go back to sleep until 7:30ish. Well, then the time change happened and she just started getting UP for the day around 5:30, probably because that is when her clock told her to wake up because she was used to getting fed then. We are slowly starting to see some progress and we are gradually getting to a later wake up time- about 6:15 right now.

So if I were you, I would realllyyy try hard not to feed him at 4:45/5 or 5:30 (I know it is way harder than it seems, I always just got up right away too bc its easiest). What happens if you do not respond right away when he wakes up at 4:45?

LO still wakes up at 5:15-5:45am everyday and he's 15.5 mos. He seems to only need 10-10.5 hrs of sleep at night, no matter what. He's down to one nap now and I was hoping that would extend his night sleep but that hasn't happened. He does take one really long nap though, so I'm happy with that.

@hilsy85: i know, its so so tough...i know i just wanted to do whatever it took to get a few more seconds of sleep in those precious early morning hours! I would honestly give it another shot and stick with it for a few days- eventually he will get the hint that when he wakes up at 4:45-5:30, he isn't getting fed, which might end the early wakings. It might suck for a few days though. It really has helped us though. LO still sometimes cries out for a second at 5:30, but goes right back to sleep. And even though 6:15 isn't amazing, every little bit helps!

@hilsy85: haha. I think I'm going to start sleeping in until 9am when he's a teenager to make up for all this loss sleep! Lol.

HHAAAAAAAATE early wakings. Whenever we go through those phases, I'd nurse him (if he seemed hungry) and put him back for another couple of hours. Now that we're done nursing, I'll probably just rock him or something when it hits again.

His phases usually last a couple of weeks and is usually wonder week or teething related. We wait 10-15 minutes of fussy time before we go in. Sometimes he just babbles and falls back asleep, sometimes it escalates to real crying and that's when we get him

@hilsy85: LOL on waking him up for a month at 5am when he is a teenager!!

What time is bedtime?

We were in the early wakings for a bit and caved and gave her the paci to keep her down. I am a morning person, but so not ready for her super early some days, lol. We are one-nap-a-day now though and I think it has reallllllly helped her night sleep, but I don't really know why? It just seems to have helped her overall consistency in her schedule, sleep especially.

How long are his naps? Perhaps his daytime sleep is affecting his night sleep? I think it's suggested that you limit naps to 1hr each at this age.

I would also try really, really, really hard to pick a 'get out of bed' time and not take him out of his crib until that time. When we dealt with early wakings, we made that time 6 am and gradually added 15-30 minutes. I would also try and hold off feeding until 30 minutes after you get him up. I think it's Ferber that says that babies condition themselves to wake up 30 minutes before their regular feeding time.

yeah, if she wakes up before 6:30, i treat it as a night waking and nurse and back to bed she goes. she goes to sleep at 7:30-8 and has always been a 12-hour stretch kinda gal (with her 1-2 MOTN wakings). she has always gone back to sleep so i wouldn't ever get her up at 5 for the day!

Honestly, I "trained" C to sleep later by leaving her in the crib until the time I wanted her awake. (Unless she was REALLY screaming, then we got up).

We still leave her if she wakes up before her "wake" time. She is normally happy to sit and talk until we come get her. She can get out of bed any time after 8am but before 9.

@hilsy85: I honestly don't know how long it took. I just don't go get her. Ever. Unless theres a problem. She caught on eventually. And I don't feel bad doing it because she wakes up happy and doesn't cry.

I do think a lot of it has to do with her just being a really good sleeper though. Girl loves to sleep. Always has.

@hilsy85: Yah, maybe worth a shot? Might be nicer to have him for a little more time in the eve, too? Pushing everything a little later might be tough, but could be worth it? C goes down 7:15/7:30 or so and then usually around 5:40 she starts babbling to herself, she'll either talk happily then fall back asleep or get fussy and we go in to give her the paci. Half her issue is she is now a princess and wants to be laid down with her blanket on top of her again, lol. And then we don't hear from her until 7-8:30am, she makes me late for work some days, but I refuse to wake her!

My son was always an early riser but was a super early riser from 5-13 months. He slept 7-5 from like 5-9 months and then 730-530 until around 13 months when He started sleeping til almost 6. I changed bedtime to 8 and then he started sleeping til 630. Before that when I put him down later even 8, he would still get up at 530. When we switched to one nap he started sleeping 8-7 ish. But rarely naps more than 1.5 hrs. I would always feed him a bottle on first wake until we bottle weaned at 14 months. Sometimes he would fall back asleep for another 45 mins but it was rare.