help with my early riser??

[cchavez]

My DS (4 months old) goes to bed b/w 7-8 pm. Usually he falls asleep on his own, after his bedtime routine and enough rocking to get him drowsy, at 7:30. He usually talks to himself and does his happy screams and then drifts off. It takes him about 20 minutes to fall asleep on his own.

He has only slept from 7:30 to 6:30 one time. Lately he is waking up b/w 4:30 and 5:30. He usually doesn’t cry but wakes up talking/happy screams. I have tried giving him up to 30minutes to one hour to see if he will go back to sleep on his own but he doesn’t. And since we are following Weissbluth, I would feel bad if he didn’t fall back to sleep until 6:30 and then I woke him up at 7AM.


I tried not going to him until 6 am but then since his wake up time is so early (for example 5 am) his day is completely off and he is grumpy so he usually needs a nap at 7 AM!

So what seems to be working is the following:

He wakes up early….I give him 10-15 minutes to see if he will settle down. Like I said he is not usually crying but he by the time I go to his room he is sucking on his thumb rather fiercely. Not sure if he is hungry or trying to sooth himself back to sleep. But I figure since he has gone about hours w/o eating he is hungry. So I feed him sometimes he only eats a few ounces and then sometimes he finishes the bottle. Then I rock him until he is drowsy and put him down most of the time, he goes back down until 6 and some (great!) days until 7:00. I don’t let him sleep past 7:10 or so.

His pediatrician said what was happening was reasonable. And even Weissbluth states until 9 months most babies will need one to two feeds a nite.

Last nite we tried shifting his bed time closer to 8 and he was up at 5:00 again. So we are willing to try a somewhat later bedtime but I don’t think that will work. Kind of what Ferber suggests.

1. So am I destined to feed him every early AM until he is 9 months old??? Will he grow out of this? OR will he always be an early riser?

2. How do I ensure that he goes back to sleep every time? I can’t take DS to our bed b/c DH gets up at around 6 am and if he wakes up at 5 and does not fall asleep until almost 6, well then he doesn’t get any sleep if he goes to our bed.

3. How long would you give him to settle on his own? OR should I go in immediately so that he does not wake up too much??

4. Since DH leaves for work early around 6:30/6:40, he does not get to see DS on the days he does sleep until 7 AM. And then he usually doesn’t get to see him a nite either b/c he comes in late from work. Should I let DH wake him up at 6:30??? But once again, if he does not fall asleep until close to 6 he doesn’t get much more sleep

5. Has anyone tried scheduled awakenings? I think J. Mindell suggests their use. Even Dr. Weissbluth says they work but they take awhile to work. Should I try this? For example, get him up at 3 am to feed until he eliminates the early rising?

I hope I am making sense! I know this is a lot of information. But if anyone would help I would appreciate.

WE have seen improvement in DS sleep in the last month or so I just don’t want to create a habit I can’t break.

Thanks.

[jd11365]

I wake Kayla up before I go to bed...usually midnight, sometimes later for a feeding which stretches the time she wakes up in the morning to between 6:30-8:30.

Jamie
Mommy to Kayla
5/1/03

[dogmom]

Sounds a lot like my DS sleep schedule, but I am a morning person so it is not a big deal. My DH sleeps until 7:30 usually. If my sweet boy wakes up at 5 or 6 and doesn't go back to sleep I just get up and start the morning routine. Feed the dogs, feed him breakfast, play. When he was younger he would last for an hour or two and then it was back to bed. Then I would go back to bed also. Some days he got up so early both of us would be going back to bed as my husband would be just getting up. My husband was pretty cool about it. He thought me and the baby sleeping was more important than not always seeing him.

He is 7 1/2 months and sleeping a little longer now, but now he is waking up in the evening sometimes, but that will change. I never had much luck with scheduled wakenings. I tried to wake him up before going to bed when he was younger, but he still was waking up at 2am, so I gave up.

I was starting to get uptight about all this sleep advice stuff when my son was younger so I decided to stop reading anything and just go with my gut. I try to make it easy for me and my son and don't worry too much what I am supposed to do. Having said that, I realize some kids have a lot more problems with sleep and the schedules can really help.

[lukkykatt]

I used to get up and change DS and nurse him when he woke up at 4:30 or 5. He just used to go right back to sleep.

I believe that Weissbluth says that a baby that age should be fed and changed if they are waking up at that time because they are probably wet and hungry by then.

I actually used to prefer the nights he woke up at that time because it seemed that he would sleep longer in the morning. I prefered getting up for 20 minutes to nurse and then sleeping til 7 or 8 then having him sleep straight through and getting up at 6.

I was never one for scheduled wakings except for the afternoon nap if it was getting into the early evening. I read Ferber/Mindell/Weissbluth and followed Weissbluth, but modified his methods to meet what I thought worked best for my family.

[Momof3Labs]

Colin grew out of it without our help. He was a 5am waker for a couple of months (would sleep 6pm - 5am) then he suddenly started sleeping until 6am. Now occasionally he will sleep till 7am (then I wonder where my day went!). He goes down at 6:30pm now.

Note that we would never go into him unless he started crying, but would base the beginning of his first nap on his initial wake-up time. So, yes, sometimes he went down for his first nap around 7am!