Help for parents of early wakers?

I've been getting several emails from parents who have toddlers waking up really early (like 5 am). The kids are obviously still tired, but can't get back to sleep or stay asleep. Then they're cranky for the rest of the day.

I'm sure many of us have gone through this on limited occasions (it happened in my house yesterday, which is why I didn't post and was foggy at work all day), but having it happen morning after morning would be truly demoralizing.

Here are the things I've suggested:

• Blackout shades on the windows. You can buy actual blackout shades, or you can buy blackout material at a fabric store, or even just heavy drapery cloth and make your own.
• Mess around with bedtime. Sometimes it seems like the kids are just in the wrong place in the sleep cycle, and that's why they wake up. So switching the starting sleep time around might alleviate the problem. (I also think it may be sort of the same effect whacking the side of the TV has to get it to stop fuzzing out, but that's just me.) As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I'd start with bumping the bedtime earlier, unless you've already got a 7 pm bedtime, in which I'd try 8 pm. (FWIW, it seems to me just from hearing people talk that most kids have a sleep-time sweet spot between 7 and 8 pm, so if you're totally up in the air I'd start with 7 and see where it gets you.)
• Check out the naps. How old is your kid? Most kids older than 18 months are down to one nap a day, in the early afternoon. If your toddler is still taking two naps, the early waking might be part of trying to drop the second nap. Messing around with that might give you some more information.
• Look at what your kid's eating. I think diet problems (including bad reactions to artificial things or acids, and reflux) usually manifest themselves earlier in the night (waking up screaming an hour after going to bed is a classic sign of reflux or too much acid, for example). But you never know. Anything that's causing stress on a kid's system can make the difference between being able to go back to sleep after the slight arousal of finishing one sleep cycle, and if they're having a tummy problem of any sort, that could do it.
• "Psychological" causes. I didn't know what else to call it, but some kids go through a monster phase, when they wake up and are scared of random things or of monsters or of being alone. You could definitely try some kind of monster-scarer or other comfort object (I think you'll have better success with something you get specifically to scare away the bad things than just trying to use an old comfort object) and explain that it will help them get back to sleep in the middle of the night and keep them safe.

But if none of this is working, what do you guys recommend? Like everything else in parenting, you could just wait it out. But if your child is desperately tired, and you can barely function at work, you need to  get everyone sleeping longer ASAP.

Does anyone want to offer solutions, suggestions, anecdotes, or commiseration?

Comments

[AmyinMotown]

Living it, HATING IT over here. What's happened with us is that she has more-or-less successfully transitioned to a big girl bed and I think she wakes up a little, a couple hours before she's supposed to, realizes she is not in her crib and cries for us. We've been laying down with her to try to get everyone a little more rest, with mixed success.

[Maura]

I think that Moxie has great suggestions, especially re: blackout shades, earlier bedtime, and knock out a nap. We're very luck with our son, who is content to just chill out in his crib, even if he wakes up early. BUT I do know that if there is a little something off, he wakes up more fully and more easily in the early morning than late at night. Like when my father got up at 6am to use the bathroom on Christmas Eve morning and woke E up. We were up for the day.

So, perhaps if the room is DARK with the blackout shades they can be more "asleep," even when they have one of the more wakeful times in their sleep cycle. Also, as counterintuitive as it seems, sleep really does beget sleep. The earlier E goes down, the later he sleeps (within reasonable limits, of course).

One suggestion, depending on your child and your feelings on sleep training, is to do a modified FIO in with the morning wakeups. Set a definite time when you're willing to be up for the day. If the child wakes up and cries/yells for you before then, you can go in very quietly, without turning the lights on, and gently remind them it's still night time and time for sleep, however you're comfortable with doing that - rocking, shushing, patting, etc. Then, leave the room. Set a time frame for how often you'll go back in, every 5mins, 10mins, etc. Go in at those intervals, repeat reminder about sleeptime, then leave. If they go back to sleep or play quietly, great! If not, continue until it's the predetermined "wake up" time, then go in a get them up for the day BUT make that a much more dramatic entrance. Turn on the lights, open the drapes, sing a happy morning song, etc. Hopefully they can begin to distinguish between comfort from you and when the day actually begins. Sort of like a set bedtime routine, but on the other end of the night.

[sue]

mwahahahahahaha! this happened to us this morning! Such a crappy way to start the day - especially with daddy out of town (though the disruption in routine is probably half the reason it happened).

Anyway, here are my suggestions from when it was more than just an occasional problem. An early bedtime. I mean REALLY early. When my daughter was younger (until she hit a little over 2) she would go to bed at 6 pm. She woke up between 5:30-6 am every morning NO MATTER WHAT TIME WE PUT HER DOWN. If we put her down at 9, she'd sleep till 5:45, if we put her down at 7, she'd sleep 'till 5:45. So we thought we'd see what we could get away with. She'd go to sleep at 6 pm and sleep until 6 am (earlier than 6 pm and she'd wake up at 4 am - yikes)

Blackout shades. Get some. Actually, get two sets and take one with you on trips. Grandparents usually have "sheers" which don't do much for getting kids to sleep (in my experience anyway)

If you can get the kid to bed early enough, you should be able to get your stuff done and go to bed pretty early, too. then you can deal with getting up at 5 am better. You'll have to tivo John Stewart, but there are worse tragedies!

[Jen]

Okay, I'm sure people will have far better suggestions but for us we went back to a modified co-sleeping arrangement. When the kids get up, they come to our room, whatever time it might be. If it is too early we pull them into bed and snuggle and almost always they go back to sleep. Of course my dd slept with us for 2 years so she has always slept better in our bed with someone there breathing next to her. If she continues to be awake, she can get a few toys and play quietly either in our room or her own. Last resort for me getting enough sleep is taking my pillow to the living room and sleeping on the couch while she watches Diego (on the DVR)with almost no sound. Saves my sanity at work that day and it happens very rarely since she usually falls back asleep when in bed with us.

[Kelly]

I was going to buy the expensive blackout fabric or shades but just couldn't take it one weekend so I went to Walmart and lo but they had fabric on sale for $1/yd and lo it was black. I gave it a try, with simply hanging it between his window and the screen on the bottom half of the window (double-hung, so that helped) and over the inside of the top half (cross-section of the window would have the fabric looking like an 'S' sortof) and it's worked like.a.dream. I'm stunned that $4 did such a fantastic job and my son loves it too. It's not perfect and doesn't block out every little speck of light but it's enough that he can still nap in the afternoon (allowing me some more quiet and helping the younger son sleep) and he can get some sleep at his typical bedtime during the summer when there's more light.

[Jen]

And remember, you kid won't go to college still sleeping in your bed! Just getting her out at bedtime was a fabulous addition to my night!

[sue]

I also wanted to shout out for Mother-ease cloth bedwetter pants. My three year old is still a heavy wetter at night, plus she's exceptionally large for her age (45 pounds and taller than most 5yo) so we were having to put her in size 7 (!) diapers. We switched to the bedwetter pants (our baby uses the regular motherease diapers) and they work GREAT! Definitely worth the money!

[yet another Jen]

Sorry to hijack this thread, but can we please hear a little more about the waking up screaming an hour after bed? I have been debating for months about whether this is worth emailing Moxie about. My 17-month-old does this off and on, and we're never sure if it's just teething-related or what. He tends to wake up 1-3 hours after falling asleep around 8, 8:15. We start bedtime around 7:30 (bath, stories, nurse, then we hold him until he falls asleep). Then if he wakes he cries and cries until one of us goes in and holds him. Either he falls back alseep enough that we put him back in the crib and he stays asleep, but more often, especially for me, he wakes back up and cries for up to about 15 min. before going to sleep. He doesn't wake up the rest of the night, is fine in the morning (luckily he doesn't have the early-wakeup problem, sorry I can't help with that), and given what other Moxie folks suffer with their kids' sleep it isn't really a big deal, but still. I'm sure all of us know the misery of being just about to go to bed oneself, all wound down and ready to crawl under the covers, only to hear the waking-up-crying sound and think, "Oh no, not again." He has never seemed to have acid reflux problems, but now I wonder. He hasn't had anything acidic lately because of a rash around his mouth, but the wakeups have not really improved. Thanks for any thoughts anyone may have, and apologies again for going off-topic!

[Catherine]

We went through this with our daughter and nothing worked. We ended up with letting her get up and play, in a safe, gated area, while we dozed on the couch in the same area.

[snickollet]

Re: blackout shades, I stole an idea from the famous Dooce and put tinfoil over the windows in my kids' bedroom. It's cheap, easy, and VERY effective. I just stuck it up with scotch tape. (Of course, one of my kids still wakes up very early most days, but we're working through the dreaded two-naps-to-one transition, and I think that's the issue.)

[paola]

Is it possible that they are going thru a fussy period related to a wonder week? I remember when I was weaning my then 16.5 month old as I was pregnant, I was petrified that he wouldn't get back to sleep after his usual 5.30 wake up. I expected him to wake the next day at the usual time, but he slept right thru to 8. I always assumed he just understood that he wasn't going to get any boob, but now as my 12 month old has always done it during fussy periods leading up to WWs, and is currently in the middle of yet another one, I realise he must have been in the middle of a fussy period himself and it had abruptly come to an end. Perhaps the 75 week WW.

[Charisse]

Ohhh yeah...and then if you do get them back to sleep after an hour, you can't pry them out of bed with a crowbar when 7 rolls around. We have had this only occasionally--but a couple thoughts:

-they might need to pee, and if they're not potty trained but are growing into physical control, they might just be uncomfortable--you could try a trip to the potty

-even if they're down to one nap, the nap might be too long (this definitely doesn't affect all kids but I have one who's sensitive to too much daytime sleep and we had to start controlling the length of her daycare naps by about age 2 or she just wouldn't get sleep at night)

-if it is nightmares, our experience was that the faster we responded, the faster she went back down and the less scared she was at bedtime. So we turned the monitor up and tried to get to her w/in 30 secs (as opposed to our old practice of waiting to see if she'd settle herself)...this made a dramatic improvement in the time for her to get back to sleep--usually less than 5 mins.

-definitely 3rd the blackout cloth to plug any light holes, especially in the summer.

[Liza]

With my almost 2-year old, this has gone in waves. Thankfully, he's slept until almost 6 on 2 of the last 3 days; he woke up at 4 on Friday and before 5:10 most of last week.

I think this is sometimes developmental. In the last 2 weeks, my son's language skills have taken a giant leap in fluency and successful mimicry. If cognitive development leaps = sleep disruptions in infants, why not in toddlers?

[Julie]

OMG, lived this for at least a year. I'm not kidding you. Between 12mo. and 24 mo. Alex would consistently wake up between 5 and 5:30. Crying hard, wanting to wake up, but just sooooo sleepy. Sometimes he would just want to be up and then......we're all up. My husband naturally wakes up about that time, and it sounds like an easy fix for the two of them to just do their thing. But no, he wants Mommy. Every morning I would cry on the phone to my friend (whose toddler would sleep until 7 or 8) whyyyyyyy meeeee???? I'm sooooooo freaking tiiiiiiired. I tried bringing him into bed with me to sleep....but that just turned into playtime. Then that morphed into watching tv (Zoboomafoo is our favorite show....have tons of them tivoed) and that bought me another 30-40 minutes of semi-sleep. Which is another example of how I have eaten my words......"do you want to watch it again?????" has replaced "I can't believe how some parents park their kids in front of the tv".

We have fashioned blackout shades (too cheap to buy them, just put up that thick black foam posterboard from Staples in the windows), we use a sound machine, many days I would BEG my husband to just stay in bed....cajole him with special treats just so Alex could sleep a little longer (my husband weighs 200 lbs and moves through the house like an elephant often waking Alex up as he tromped down the hall by his room)....nothing worked.

Finally, around 24 months, his body clock shifted a little bit. Previously he was going to bed around 6:30-ish.....and needing to. But then he suddenly got very delightful and playful around that time so we bumped his bedtime back to 7. It's now between 7 and 7:30.....and he's blissfully sleeping until 6:30-7:00 pretty consistently. THANK GOD. Every now and then he will wake up at 5:30, but if I leave him alone he often will go back to sleep on his own. But sometimes he will have a week when he won't. But at least it's not endless.

I have also started limiting his afternoon nap to 2 hours. Some days he was sleeping for 3 hours if I let him - wonderful for ME, but not so good for the bedtime and wake up times. So I don't let him sleep past 3/3:15 anymore, and he seems fine with that.

I have no solutions, really. Because like with everything else, I'm not sure if it was anything *I* did, or if he just grew out of it. But all of you have some MAJOR SYMPATHY and early morning hugs from me. It's truly awful. I guess fiddle around with the bedtime a bit, try limiting naps......just try to hang onto the wonderful thought that someday in the future your little one is going to want to sleep in until 11 or 12noon on the weekends and oh.....that just sounds blissful to me. Can't wait.

[JenN]

My 15 month old son has always been an early riser, but the time change last fall pushed his wakings to the 4:00 hour. Talk about miserable. To get him to sleep later, I tried everything Moxie recommended in old posts and everything Elizabeth Pantley recommends in The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers. Nothing worked. Pushing his bedtime slightly earlier just made him wake up even earlier (3:30am in NOT morning!) and pushing his bedtime later didn't cause him to wake up later, it just made him wake up more during the night because he was overtired and then was even crankier the next day because he only had about 9 hours of sleep. And on and on.

Since none of those tricks worked, I just had to deal with it. I found that a 5pm bedtime helped him stop waking every 45 minutes (he was finally falling asleep before he was overtired). I went to bed earlier so I could get a decent amount of sleep before 4am rolled around. And I learned to enjoy the wee-hours of the morning.

My son is an intense increase-tension crier and still nurses to sleep almost all of the time. Any sort of FIO will just cause major clinginess for the rest of the day and definitely won't result in additional sleep. I sleep with him for the second half of the night. If I can wake myself up right when he first stirs in the early morning hours and get him back to sleep very quickly (99% of the time by nursing), he'll sleep for another hour or two. Any fussing whatsoever instantly ends the night if it is after 4am.

I'm thrilled to say that he is now sleeping from 8pm to 6 or 7am! (still with a few wakings, though) All it took was a week-long trip at Christmas to make the change. He was really excited by all of the activity each night that he happily stayed awake until around 8pm each night, and slept until 6 or 7am (probably because he was so exhausted). The later sleep and wake times have held for 2 weeks now. So, next fall I'm going to plan a really fun, exciting family vacation to coincide with the time change...hopefully that will avoid months of frustration over the early wakings.

[Parisienne Mais Presque]

We have yet to run into this since we're still a ways from toddlerhood. Our six month old likes to sleep in most of the time (bliss!), and just as well, because he isn't AT ALL into naps. Or rather he's into twenty-minute power naps, preferably on the move.

But the monster comment reminded me of how my parents dealt with the monsters that were waking me up in the middle of the night when I was three. We had just moved to Olympia, Washington, and I was convinced that monsters lurked everywhere in the new house.

My father explained that since Olympia is the state capital, the legislature had banned all monsters from taking up residence. I believed it, and never worried about monsters again. It may be the last time I had any confidence in politicians.

So, it may be worth coming up with some sort of fancy, grown-up sounding reason to stop worrying about monsters. Or maybe I've just always been gullible...

[Cloud]

One thing that MAY be helping us with both our early night waking and our early bird tendencies is a product called Culturelle. It is a lactobacillus formulation recommended by my pediatrician to help Pumpkin's digestive system get settled. (The Ped says it also helps with recurrent thrush, too). Pumpkin has a lot of trouble with gas, which wakes her up. One thing to note, though- it has a minute amount of (cow) milk proteins in it, because that is the substrate used to culture the bacteria. I held off on trying it for that reason (Pumpkin has/had? sensitivity to milk in my diet), and used a dairy-free acidophilus prep instead. This weekend we decided to try the Culturelle, figuring that things were so bad that it was unlikely to make them worse. And lo- things have gotten better. One night waking has been dropped, and she is going back to sleep after her 5 a.m. waking. I hope I haven't jinxed us.

Also, right now, I am sleeping on the sofa with her for the 5-6:30/7 time period. She is 9 months old, so this still works. I have found in the past that whenever she is switching to a later wake up time, it helps if I hold her for the "new" sleep period for a week or two, and then work on moving her back to her crib once the new pattern is established. I did this a few months ago in the transition from a 4:30 a.m. wake up to a 5/5:30 a.m. wake up. She's always been an early bird, which must be some sort of cosmic joke on me, someone who is most definitely NOT a morning person.

[flea]

Twice recently, when confronted with a 17 month old saying "Hi! Hi! Hello! Hello!" (once at 5am and once at 1am!!! when he usually sleeps past 6:30) we have resorted to depositing the happy boy back in his crib and setting up the laptop to play a Baby Einstein video in his room. He apparently finds these so boring after about 10 minutes that he goes back to sleep.

Not that I recommend this on an every day basis...

[shirky]

ha, I wish my kid would wake up then, we have to get ready for work and it's awful to wake a sleeping kid. grumble.

[Maria]

I tried and tried and TRIED to follow the 'sleep begets sleep' philosophy, particularly when my daughter was in the 2-3 year old wacky sleep phase, but I have to tell you – it did NOT work for us. I really believed it. It's true for myself. I wanted it to be true really bad. But Lo and behold, when she went to sleep earlier, she woke up earlier. When she napped longer, she went to bed later. Sadly there was nothing counterintuitive about her sleep patterns.

She may just be one of those kids who is on the low end of the amount-of-sleep-needed spectrum, I don't know. Now, at 4, she ordinarily sleeps about 10 hours at night and takes no nap. I am doggedly trying to ease her bedtime earlier (in the wake of the holidays she's going to sleep around 9:30, and I'd love to get it an hour earlier), but I have little expectation that that will result in a later wakeup.

All that said (is anyone still with me?), I had success with darkened room in the morning. I didn't bother with fancy blacking-out, I just closed the curtains, and it made a big difference right away, and still does. My gut tells me that going in and doing some calming comfort would be more effective the quicker you get there rather than waiting to see if she'll settle herself. The less awake they get before being reminded that it's still night time and soothed back to sleep, the better, IMO.

[Sara]

This is my first time posting - this totally resonates with me. N., now 19 mths, first started waking up early at 5 am around 6 mths, and at that point, would nurse, and then fall back to sleep until 7 am. At around 12 mths, she stopped falling back to sleep after the nursing... Our pedi suggested moving her 6:30 pm bedtime slowly later by 5 minutes per night, until we reached a wake up time that worked for all. This worked, she slept from 7:30 pm - 6:30 am, until she got an ear infection two months later. We now know that an early wakening is usually a sign of an ear infection. Strangely, the DST worked in our favor - for two months afterward, she slept from 7 pm - 7 am, until, yes, the latest ear infection. When she woke up early due to this latest ear infection, we rocked, sang, co-slept in her room, you name it, to get her to go back to sleep, and NONE of it worked, AND she was exhausted. One morning she was up for the day at 4:45 am and then was so overtired that she only took an hour long nap. And, we were so tired that we were almost hallucinating.

So - now that the latest (#8) ear infection is resolved, our final solution is to tell her that 6 am is the morning, and that if she wakes up beforehand, it's still nighttime, we know that she can put herself back to sleep as she has on countless occasions, and that M&D need sleep too, so we won't be able to get her until morning. May sound harsh, but it works. She woke up two mornings ago at 5:15 am, cried for 15 minutes, and then fell back asleep until 6:45. Awful to hear her cry, but we know from experience that it never ever works to go in (in the past, we did what Maura did, and she only got excited to see us, and then devastated when we left), she releases tension from crying, and that she needs her sleep (as do we)! So, now she sleeps from 7 pm till at least 6 am - I do miss those 7 am wakeups, though...

If you do change your babe's bedtime, make sure to do it gradually, in increments over time.

[sam]

This has been my world for months. After many many months of wonderful 6:30-6:30 sleeping, the early morning wake ups started. I sought comfort in the 18 month sleep regression, molars, any explanation we could use. Finally, as T. turned 20 months, we decide that the pre-6 am (starting as early as 4 or 4:30) wake ups must stop.

Tweaking her bedtime didn't work, bringing her to our bed didn't work, letting her be up for the day made the day a disaster.

We explained to her that everyone needs to sleep, etc., started putting a cup of water in her bed, and stopped going to her before 6. There's not much she can do in terms of self-entertaining as it's completely dark in the 5 o'clock hour so I haven't left her books or toys (other than her stuffed sleeping companions).

We've never been much for CIO/FIO, but at times we've found that this is what works, and all of our other attempts resulted in more and earlier wake ups. I can "ignore" her if the early morning fussing is intermittent and clearly leading back to sleep, but when it starts ramping up, we're done.

So, for the past week, wake up has edged closer to 6, even hitting the glorious hour of 6:55 one morning. Unfortunately we were back into the 4 o'clock hour this morning, and that's just not pretty.

Not much advice, but a lot of commiseration.

[bree]

My 8-month-old has been waking up at 3am and 5am the last couple of days and wanting to play ... he always wakes frequently in the night, but usually goes right back to sleep with either nursing, rocking, patting or shushing. On the plus side, his daytime naps have been increasing from 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hours ...

We had the same experience as the commenter whose baby went to bed later and slept better during the holiday chaos. He seemed to thrive on all the activity.

[Julie]

FWIW....I think the "sleep begets sleep" mantra really only works for babies/young toddlers up until around 18 months or so. It no longer works for us....but USED to be the magic bullet. Now, like the PP said, it just messes with bedtime and wake up times.

[caramama]

I've been really hesitant about using black-out curtains (or an equivalent). Won't this get the baby used to sleeping in complete darkness? Are you able to transition from it later? Will we always have to bring an extra set with us when we travel?

I was hesitant about white noise, but now that I've seen the beauty of the humidifier in her room (since she was sick), I'm hooked. Will I feel the same about black-out curtains?

[Alisha]

Something I read somewhere recently spoke of using music to push back waking time. You would need an alarm clock that tied into a CD player. Initially you set the music to go off ten minutes before the time they are naturally waking. Every day you push the music back ten or so minutes until you arrive at your ideal time thus creating a waking association. This is not something I have tried as we are not (yet) experiencing this challenge. I thought it was an interesting suggestion that I had not seen posed before. Good luck.

[Jan]

@yet another Jen: The consistent wake-up time makes me think of the beginnings of night terrors. Does anybody in your family have any sleep disorders? Sleep walking/talking? Night terrors as a child? I can't remember what exactly it is you're supposed to do if it's night terrors, but I'm pretty sure it's different than for regular waking. Might be something to look into.

What's worked at our house (two kids) has been setting an arbitrary time (say, 6 a.m.) before which we do not get up for the day. I will soothe or feed (second kid we pretty much had a no-cry policy) or ignore (first kid we were more let-her-cry oriented) but the lights don't go on and we don't leave the bedroom until it's 'morning'. (This is the same policy I used at night once we were past the infant stage, too -- I'll go in and help, but we ain't 'getting up'). I highly recommend ignoring any child that isn't very upset -- cranky complaining does NOT get Mommy out of bed at my house. This is because I am lazy and so not a morning person.

That said, with my second, I did have to resign myself to several months (maybe 15-18 months? maybe a little earlier?) of doing a feeding around 5 a.m. My job is flexible about time and place, so I actually put the baby back down and got a couple of hours of work done in the mornings before the rest of the household was awake. I had to go to bed pretty early, but I also worked enough extra hours to take a full day off during the week most weeks, so it wasn't all bad.

Now my preschooler usually wakes before me, but she plays quietly in her room or the hall or reads books in our bedroom until she hears me waking up. I woke up one time to find her asleep on the floor in the doorway of our bedroom! I don't know how long she'd been there.

[Katy]

We have had this problem off and on since my son started sleeping through (well, most nights). He just turned 2. White nosie and black-out shades have definitely helped, as has making his bedtime a bit later. The later bedtime takes a while to work - for the first several days to a week, he still got up at the early hour and was kind of cranky, but I tried to make sure he didn't eat breakfast until his 'normal' time, and I kept lights low until then as well (trying to help his body learn the cues). I also tried to keep his afternoon nap on its normal schedule of 1pm, even though he was cranky. After a while, he started to sleep later. Now he usually goes to bed shortly after 8 and sleeps until 7:30.

The other thing that helped (when he was waking early about a month ago) was warming his room up a bit. We're in Minnesota, and it turns out that, in winter, his room is the coldest in the house. I thought that would help him sleep, as long as he was in heavy pj's, but we ended up trying a space heater (with a thermostat) in there, and keeping his room a little warmer, and his night sleep and especially naps have gotten much better. So maybe some of his early waking recently was because he was chilly.

Hope that helps someone.

[Michelle]

We have dealt with this too for a few months now. Our Little Man is now 21 (almost 22) months old.

I think a lot of it was that he was soaking his diaper (and his pajamas and his sheets) by about 5am every morning. Thank you to Moxie and everyone who gave us ideas on that a few weeks ago. We have since started using the diaper doublers and I have killed off the bedtime bottle (success at last!) and that has helped.

He is now getting up around 6am everyday, but he is content to lay on the couch with me or Daddy and watch TV for at least a half an hour - he does not go back to sleep though. But I try to look on the bright side - getting up earlier gets my husband to work on time more often and gives me a chance to get caught up on email and work (I work at home) before the Baby (6 months) gets up.

I would definitely recommend the blackout shades - we have had those in my son's room since he was about a year old. I just put black shades behind the red ones we already had.

Good luck!

[Caroline]

Definitely a believer in the "whack the side of the TV" method. Whenever my daughter was having a sleep issue we found that a big shake up fixed it - usually coincided with a trip, but I don't think it really matters how, just changing the routine around helped.

Now on the weekends, when we'd pay cash money for an extra hour, it's Backyardigans for her, pillow on the couch for one of us, too. I'm with Julie, preachy morals go out the window when you need more sleep!

[Alison]

I would love more ideas for black-out shade substitutes. I had BO curtains up in T's room for the first 3 months. Every night though, there was a terrible smell in her room - we thought it was mold and then the diaper pail (that's how I ended up with a $70 diaper pail after all my righteous indignation about the silliness of such things. sigh). Finally one morning, I sniffed the curtains and realized it was the black-out fabric off-gassing after being heated up by the reflection of the sun off the deck outside of T's room. Ugh. Took them out, put up plain curtains & smell is gone. Right now, early waking is not so much an issue, but come spring... well, I want a solution but am obviously leery of black-out fabric. I like the foamboard idea - any others?

[Shandra]

Aluminum foil on the windows works too :)

[PrehistoricMama]

@caramama: We've done white noise from the beginning with our 2-year-old DS because he is extremely sensitive to random household noise. My DH had the same concerns you do, but I told him that we could turn the volume down gradually. He just can't sleep with absolute quiet. Neither can I, BTW.

I can't believe I didn't actually try black-out shades (in the form of a blanket tacked up with thumbtacks!) until just recently, but it has bought us an extra hour (!!!) of sleep in the morning. He is sooo sensitive to light that the barest glimmer of light will wake him up. This means no night-light, no moon shining in from OUR room down the hall, etc.

Ditto on the no naps past 4 pm and no naps over 2 hours. As painful as it is to wake a sleeping child, it's more painful to see 9 pm come and go with your toddler bouncing happily around the room.

Ditto also on the cold room aspect. We added a space heater this winter, and it has eliminated much of the night wakings.

We sort of do the buffet approach: if his crying persists, and cuddling him in his room won't do it, we go to Plan B. Plan B is sleeping in bed with us. If he's restless and wants to play in bed with us at 4 am, we go to Plan C. Plan C is I or my DH sit (or lie on the floor...we need a sleeper armchair badly) with him in the dark and reassure him until he's asleep. Plan D (basically the break the glass with the hammer approach) would be to take him downstairs to play quietly while one of us watches wearily from the couch. Plan D must NOT happen. And rarely does.

[Jennifer]

We've gone through this in phases for the last year (our daughter is now 26 months) and about every 2 months it hits again. The only thing we've found to work is to bring her into bed with us from 5-7. Lasts about a week and then she's back to sleeping in in her own crib.

[Charisse]

@Maria, we are sisters! I mean in the low-sleep-need preschooler sense. And the "sleep begets sleep" thing having absolutely nothing to do with our kids. And the 9:30 bedtimes. (I mean, if she's only going to sleep 10 1/2 hours I don't want her going to bed at 7:30!) Good luck, know I'm out here if you ever need to vent and not hear "just be firm and put her to bed earlier" as an answer. :)

[sidney]

In the last month my 23.5 month old has changed her sleep habits, she used to love bed time, I am not kidding, we would lay her down, cover her up, kiss her good night and voila she was happily off to sleep. The last month she first started waking several times at night, I decided it was teething her canine's, we would do orajel when she awoke or tylenol whichever seems appropriate, then she quit sleeping in her crib. She flat out refused, so we put her to bed in her sisters twin bed (moved her to the crib when she fell asleep, sister falls asleep in our bed- anyone have tips on siblings sharing a room and getting them to fall asleep at the same time!!!???) until we could drag the toddler bed out of the garage and take the crib down. We are still getting the night wakings between 3-5 every morning, sometimes she doesn't go back to bed. I was wondering if it could be she's wetting her diaper and now starting to realize it. It has been pretty hard on my husband and I, it could still be the teeth, I noticed she's now cutting her two bottom back molars and one last canine. I am worried the "off the routine" sleep schedule will stick. She sleeps terrible at night if she's not well rested during the day, their room is dark and cool at night (I live in Miami so I guarantee the room isn't too hot!). When I re-adjust bedtimes I do it in 15 min increments. I.E. 7:00 is bathtime, I would push it to 7:15 the next night until we got to where I wanted it. We do that when the days lengthen. I never mess with naptime unless it goes to long. If she misses her naptime I will let her go down as late as 2:00 but not after.

[rudyinparis]

Sorry for the OT--but, Michelle, what method did you end up using to cut out that bedtime bottle?

[Laura]

We're planning to use thin pieces of painted wood to hang over the window at nights with enough margin to completely cover the windows.

We've been dealing with this sleep issue for 2 1/2 years. Only it's not been 5 a.m. it's 3:30 a.m, 4:00 a.m. After eight or so months of it (and trying EVERY SINGLE THING IN EVERY SINGLE SLEEP BOOK EVER WRITTEN), I gave up and took my blanket to the couch and turned on the TV. My daughter didn't and doesn't nap and spent the entire nap time SCREAMING. I just gave up and gave in and accepted. After of course, trying everything. We were absolutely a mess as a family for at least 18 months. We finally got used to the depressed fog since we didn't get any medical answers and no amount of "sleep solutions" worked on this stubborn kiddo. Now, she'll lay in bed with me when she wakes up early and watch cartoons quietly by me so I can still sleep.

My son started the same thing and instead of fighting it big time, after trying a few of the more recommended methods of putting him back to bed, feeding him, checking for things out of place keeping him awake, I take him downstairs and he plays while I watch shows on my DVR. He goes back to bed a few hours later and doesn't do it again for a few months. It still happens on and off, but THANK GOD, it's not every day like with our first.

Feeling your pain....If all these suggestions don't help, look into sensory issues maybe? That's what's going on in our case and it took 18 months for anyone to figure it out. With therapy and time, it's a little better and I look forward to the day when she's 16 and I have to drag her out of bed for school.

[pnuts mama]

ahh, the collective wisdom of the group- how i love it here!

@ alison- yes, the blackout fabric (which is actually WHITE- but is canvasy on one side and rubber laminated on the other) absolutely can have a 'smell'- one thing is if you sew the fabric onto existing curtains make sure you have the rubber side face the back of the curtain- not the window/heater. you could achieve similar results with a heavy canvas and thick flannel (sometimes called interlining) combination.

sewing blackout lining onto some old cheap fabric shower curtains that masquerade as regular curtains in our bedroom did wonders for all of us getting better sleep- also cut down on noise from outside as well. i love it.

@caramama- i let go of worrying if i was setting up my kid for a lifetime of needing to sleep like ___ because i was so tired. i figure, it won't be long before she'll only be sleeping at night anyway, and if she needs darkness to sleep for the rest of her life there could be worse things. my motto is "any means necessary" to sleep.

@sue- you made me laugh with your comment about bringing the curtains to grandmas- we totally brought them to grandmas- we were there for a week and there was no way pnut could have slept in that bright drafty freezing room otherwise! but i was thinking- am i just a rude obnoxious beeyotch to bring my own curtain from home for the week? i was hoping it wouldn't be viewed as insulting.

[pnuts mama]

i also have noticed that the pnut (2.5 years old) naps/sleeps better when she's had some good activity during the day (swimming, errands, playground, playdate, etc)-i know that seems like a "no, duh" thing but the days where we just chill at home and do more sedentary play she is less likely to go down for a nap anymore- *learned that lesson the hard way!*

also, when she does get up at some ungodly hour, since she still sleeps in our room (ugh) i usually wake up enough to shoosh her, tell her it's still night night time and go back to sleep- if she fights it i turn her night-night lullaby cd on and she usually falls back asleep.

i know so many people who have problems with sleeping after the switch to the "big-kid bed" that i have decided to keep the pnut in her crib til she's an adolescent. what? is that wrong? :)

[enu]

Waiting it out does work - by middle school 730 AM bus times or at the very worst, by high school 650AM bus times, they will gladly sleep through til 1 PM for you ;-)

It is painful, and I wishe you all the best and a bit of sleep!

[rudyinparis]

I know Eldest was the most fabulous sleeper until age 2 when we moved her to a toddler bed. It all went to hell after that, and she still--over 2 years later--is getting into bed with us during the night. I think that was the biggest error in judgement I've had as a parent, moving her out of the crib. But I was pregnant with Younger and wanted to do it sooner rather than later so she didn't associate being moved out of the crib with the arrival of the baby. It was a mistake. We should have done it differently.

Sorry to be OT again. That's the day I'm having, I guess.

[ireps]

sigh. this is us and i am SO tired all the time. the boy will only sleep from 9pm to 5am, and nothing has worked, nothing. he will sometimes take a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day but other than that its full on toddler energy all day long.

[charissa]

Didn't read the comments, so I don't know if this has been mentioned yet... My daughter is undoubtably in the minority here, but from about six months til about three years her bedtime was between 6:00 and 6:30pm. If she missed a nap, or was sick, it might even be earlier. I know this is not typical, but I can tell you with certainty that she needed to go to bed that early. If we held off until 7:00pm or later, life would be unpleasant starting around 3:00am. For what it's worth, she's almost four now, and is typically asleep by 7:30pm (still naps for one+ hour in the afternoon.)

[z]

Haven't read any comments but just wanted to comment on the tummy issues.

In the Indo-subcontinental culture it is very common to give Gripewater to infants and kids for stomach stuff. I have been giving it to the panda since he was a wee little baby and even now we give him a little .5 teaspoon or so before he goes to bed. On the nights he doesn't get it we seem to have some more fussiness so I feel it does the trick for him.

We use a brand called Woodwards (it's british) and you can get it at most Indian food stores. It's very sweet and tastes pretty good (I remember sneaking it as a kid b/c i liked the taste). It's basically rosewater and anise.

Anyhow, just wanted to throw that out there for parents to try it out. We use it for tummy stuff and I use it these days for heartburn (much better than the chalky stuff).

[Julie]

pnuts mama....YES. Same here with the crib. Alex LOVES his crib. Friends have already made the transition to bed and I do not envy them. I'm looking into ways to pack up the crib and ship it off with him to college. I'll let you know.

;)

[Julie]

Michelle, I also would like to know how you cut out the bedtime bottle....and how old your little one was when you did it.

We finally got Alex to drink milk (okay okay, it's the sweetened Horizon organic milk with vanilla) from the straw carton. Previously he would swallow it and spit it out. I feel that is a huge accomplishment. Prior milk was ONLY for a bottle. Granted, we're calling it a "latte" instead of milk.....but our goal is to get him OFF the bottle and onto a sippy cup at some point in the future. NO rush.....this recent development shows that he'll do it when he is ready, but am curious how you elimintated that bottle completely.

[Lisa]

We had this the last 2 months (T. was 21-23 months old) - was just about to write Moxie when it changed (aka the lazy woman's solution).

Part of it was an extended wonky reaction to daylight savings time, part of it an extended bout of early self-toilet-training (since abandoned for the nonce - I had very mixed feelings about being woken up with potty requests at 4:30), part, I think, a combination of a 1"/month growth spurt and sudden leap in verbal skills, and part a result of the transition to big-kid bed (though we're still cosleeping from the 3AM wakeup until he insists on rising).

Anyway, that's all past now (for now - hahahahaha), and I have little to report, other than what we did that seemed to help a bit: blackout curtains; going back to cosleeping for that last bit of the night; trying to push bedtime back to at least 7 with exciting activities and visitors from 5:30-7 (he'd been regularly conking out at 6 since he was up so early).

I think eventually change just happened.

[Lisa]

I should add that the toddler bed was a rush job - one day he flat-out refused to get in the crib and would sleep only with us (which he'd previously done only from 3-7 AM, and which we all enjoyed... but all night? No, thanks). The next day DH took T. to Ikea to pick out an exciting new matress, comforter, etc. And the next day he refused *our* bed entirely... leaving me to trudge down the hall for the 3 AM nursing, conk out in the process, and wake up at 5:30 with a sore neck. So it was, um, complicated.

[Lisa]

(He did eventually go in for the 3-7 cosleeping again. Sorry - brain like a sieve today, despite the decent sleep.)