Early risings and how to solve them.
1st January 2024
The new year is upon us and i’m kicking off this year’s blog topics with one of the most difficult sleep issues to crack…Early Morning Risings!
That’s waking up for the day any earlier than 6am. I know, i know; “6am is also far too early!” i hear you cry. But in baby-sleep-world 6am is deemed acceptable. Pre-6am not so much.
SO
How do we encourage our little ones to be 6am’ers or later? Well lets look at the top culprits:
Now can you see why its so hard to crack? Yup; there’s just so many things it could be! Plus, any wakings from 4am onwards are just harder to resettle your baby for because morning is drawing nearer and your baby’s body clock is starting to gear up for wake-up-time anyway.
The way to approach this is to methodically rule out each contender until you start to see progress.
Lets take daylight and temperature first. If the dawn is creeping into your baby’s room in the early hours, it signals to you baby’s body that its morning and its time to get up. Black out Blinds are the easy fix for this one! Body temperature naturally drops from around 4am so if the room or clothing is on the chilly side, your baby can wake at this point. Dressing your baby appropriately for the room temperature is key; try putting socks on them in the winter months to see if that just takes the edge off a chilly 4am room!
Next up, lets look at discomfort and hunger. Both pretty similar actually; if your baby is uncomfortable through pain, illness or hunger, they’ll rouse from slumber when approaching the morning and struggle to fall back to sleep. So, make sure your baby is getting age-appropriate feeds during the day and night if applicable. And if discomfort is the cause it’ll be a case of riding it out (teething and illness being temporary) or addressing the root cause (such as reflux or allergies).
When it comes to undertiredness the day-time sleep timings are crucial to successfully keeping your baby asleep til that sweet post 6am morning wake up. If undertiredness is at play that means too much day sleep or a bedtime too close to their final nap; so that there’s not enough sleep pressure (sleep drive) to KEEP them asleep until 6am. There’s only so much sleep your baby can do in 24hours so if they’re taking too much of that quota in the day in naps, there’s less quota to fill overnight. Sleep does not necessarily breed sleep.
AND Finally; Self Settling. Ahhhh. A controversial one. But yes, if your baby is being helped to sleep, they’ll also need you to help them back to sleep after they wake from each sleep cycle. And, AGAIN - i’ve mentioned this a couple of times already; if they wake at 4.30am its just plain HARDER for them to fall back to sleep with morning being so close. So they’re up for the day. When your baby reaches toddler age (say around 18months and over) this slightly changes. Yes being able to settle to sleep by themselves will really help, but your approach will be completely different to that of a baby under a year old. And the tools at your disposal are more varied, more psychological and take a little longer to see results (sorry!).
So there you have it. The top reasons your little one is waking you up at an ungodly hour for the day and how to go about addressing it. If you need help working this all out and you’re tired of experiencing a groundhog day of 5am starts get in touch; I can help you get to the root of it quickly and we can work together on a plan to get everyone sleeping towards a more acceptable morning goal!
Want to read more of my thoughts on sleep? Join the mailing list and get a free Night Wakings and Naps Guide too!
Join the mailing list!