Early wakings

I know this is an issue for a lot of people, but my DD constantly wakes at 4.30/5am and won't resettle. I try feeding, changing etc all in the dark with no eye contact or talking, but she's well and truly awake. But when we officially get up, she grizzles with tiredness and goes back to sleep around 6.30 for her first nap of an hour.

Her bedtime is usually 7, with a dream feed at 10.30 but she'll still wake at 2am, then again at 4.30/5. I've tried adjusting bedtime forwards and back, but it seems to make no difference. Does anyone have advice?

hmmm alex has been through phases of this. We used a dummy with him and that usually helped him to either soothe himself back to sleep or keep him quiet in his cot for an hour or so till i could face getting up.

He just seemed to wake later as time went on, nothing we really did, maybe the change of daytime sleeps or routine but never anything i could point to i'm afraid.

Could you bring him into your bed and get him to sleep that way? At least that way you'll be able to lie down! Another thing we do when it is bad is that we take turns getting up, so dh does one night and i do the next etc. That way you are guaranteed a sleep every second night. Oh and EARPLUGS!!! Love my earplugs ;-) you can still hear them when they really wind up but otherwise help you sleep through their chattering or just grizzling.

we have early starts here too (5.15am yetserday, although this morning was a lovely sleep-in till 6.30!)

It does come and go, so fingers crossed it's something you just have to ride out for now....until the early starts come back again!

Advice from a book i have (Good night sleep tight by kim west - love it!) says that you pick your 'start of the day' time, and anything before that is still nighttime. so even though it's unbelievably hard to do at that time of the morning, you act the same way you would at 2am and try your hardest t re-settle (be it via feeding, rocking, everything quiet and dark etc etc). If it then takes you to your starting the day time (for us it's 6am), you leave the room for a couple of minutes and come back in and do the "yay it's morning, let's get up" routine of turning on lights, being louder and happy etc (god knows how you're meant to do that after already being awake for an hour ), but anyway, apparently it can take a while but eventually they get the message that morning doesn't start until 6am (or whatever time you choose). The trick is picking a time and sticking to it, otherwise your day creeps earlier and earlier. What we do is just leave her until 6am at the earliest, and fortunately she is used to it, so is happy (or at the worst mildly complainy) to play with some toys/books we leave around the cot and looks at her aquarium that she can turn on. We also leave her water bottle where she can reach it.....and we try and ignore her and go back to sleep!

However, obviously some of this isn't yet applicable to a 4month old! The book i mentioned before has age-appropriate advice, so I'll have a read of the 3-6 month chapter and see what it says.

Edit for spelling!

Edited by blondy

This is te coldest time of the night. Are you sure she isn't waking through cold?
Perhaps have a heater on timer, or throw on an extra blanket at 2am wake.
Do you really have to do a nappy change? That really won't be helping.
Is the feed a good one, or just a comfort one? If the latter perhaps slowly cut down on the volume.

wellygirl wrote: Her bedtime is usually 7, with a dream feed at 10.30 but she'll still wake at 2am, then again at 4.30/5. I've tried adjusting bedtime forwards and back, but it seems to make no difference. Does anyone have advice?

DS also does 7/7.30pm bed, 10.30 dreamfeed (BF), 2am BF, 5am BF, and awake around 7am.
He's is almost 3 mths. I thought (hoped, dreamed) that after 3 mths he'd start dropping the 2am feed.
I feel bad about it, but we're just about to go for FF at the dream feed hoping this will push the 2am feed out and let me get more than 3hrs sleep at a go