@mickaela This is going to sound absolutely insane but when my kid went through an early rising phase we were following Taking Cara Babies and she recommended moving her bedtime EARLIER, not later. When we did that she started sleeping til her normal time again. It felt like magic.
You have a million conflicting opinions already but if you want one more id look at Taking Cara Babies Instagram, she has lots of helpful advice.
@mickaela Agree with others about adjusting the schedule. And I understand she is still in a crib and also quite young. But she also might be legit starving when she wakes up. Any chance she’d be able to serve herself a snack? Could you leave a banana in her crib, or right outside within her reach? A plate of crackers and cheese? Hard to think of snacks that you could leave unwrapped and a toddler could do themselves, but you could find something. Maybe she can learn to snack and then fall back to sleep without your intervention?
@mickaela Our kiddo is the same. Bed at 6:30. Wakes at 4:15 am. Now we just leave them (now 10 months) in the bed until 5 am. They can scream but we won’t come in until 5. It took about a week but they learned.
@mickaela I am so sorry, I just moved my bedtime up accordingly and woke with my rooster kids, during the ages when they required attention.
BUT, if your child is wanting food, then more sleep — I actually would treat this as a nighttime wakening & at 18 months, that means, for my family, they could cry or sleep until morning wake time, but mom would not be coming for them. We had a brutal 14 months of waking every 1-3 hours — and extinction CIO method was the best thing ever for my well-being and their ability to sleep & self-soothe.
@mickaela she goes to bed by 7, wakes up at 4 eats then goes back to bed.
no offense but in my world of years of breastfeeding , this is nothing in the world of parental sleep exhaustion.
it is annoying AF and I get it. my now 14 m old still wakes up once most nights… it’s def getting old lol
your options are - ride it out , could be a phase she’ll get over
OR
alter bedtime
OR
sleep train.
either is reasonable
@mickaela When my son was 3 months old he used to wake me up at 4am for no reason till it dawned on me that he wanted a bottle. He got we went baxk to sleep for another hour and half then it was time ti get up. Now my son sleeps from 830 till 730am. We established his bed time at 2.5 months and have stuck with it. Try reading moms on call or the sleep solution books.
@mickaela I would try pushing back bedtime by 10 minutes per week for a few weeks and try to get her going to bed at 7:15 as a starting point?
Our daughter (20 months) is a good sleeper but we’re struggling to get everything done by her 7pm bed time, so we’re doing this at the moment with the aim of getting her to a 7:30 bed time
When she was little we did the adjustment backwards to bring her bedtime back to 7pm (should have stopped at 7:30!!)
@mickaela I have an early riser who is about to turn 3. I now subsequently am an early sleeper. I’m asleep by 9. We’ve just adjusted everything around it. I start work at 6:30, he does early care and early pick up.
@mickaela I have to disagree with folks saying her bedtime is too early, though maybe my kid likes to sleep.
My 3.5 year old has had a bedtime between 6:30-6:45 for ages and she sleeps until 6:30 am on the regular. She naps at daycare for about an hour but not at home on the weekends now, but when she was 18 months old, bedtime was 6:39-6:45, awake at 6:15-6:30 am and a 2 hour nap during the day.
@mickaela My 22mo is also an early riser, albeit not that early (5:30 for us). Our bedtime is 7:30pm, it is still going on.
What somewhat helps is no food and no playtime before 6am. So a parent takes her downstairs, and offers to either snuggle on the couch or play by herself. She usually plays for 5 mins and then snuggles and sometimes even falls asleep for 30-40 more minutes. At least you get a bit more rest by lying down.
@mickaela This sounds like a sleep regression. Mine goes to bed 6-6:30 and has bad weeks where he wakes up early or can’t sleep till 8 or 9 but then it always settles back to his normal sleep time. Get through this stage in a week or two she’ll go back. She’s been hungry so she might be going through a growth spurt.
