changing the clocks and early rising

[hellosailor]

My first experience of this with a baby. ....gah. zzzzzz....hope they get the hang of it in a few days...!

[Pickle]

Oh dear! Somehow my kids (even when they were tiny) have alway auto-adjusted, which is brilliant. Hubby was away last night and I feel like I've actually had a long lie as kids didn't start making noise till 7am new time, so a whole hour later than they usually do. No idea how they do it!

I'm sure she'll have it sorted in a couple of days at most.

P x

[hellosailor]

That's so lucky Pickle! You better get all the sleep you can now!

It is a small consolation that although she has been up for many hours, she does as we speak look really rather winsome in a beautiful hand knitted cable knit vest...so thank you for that!

x

[Pickle]

Oh brilliant, hope it isn't too huge on her!

[snowboarder]

Weirdly the baby adjusted too and slept till 6.45 new time. However toddler woke at 5.30...but we're going cold turkey today and naps at the normal 'new' times. I think they will wake early for a bit as it's lighter again but hopefully settle...the 2 yr old is a horror for early waking anyway...

[Ruth_Baldock]

Seb was up at 4:30am. I am going to die today. Newborn woke at 8am, after having her last feed at 11pm. She's a keeper...

[jollybaby]

We're having a bit of a nightmare here - trust today to be a day when miss Jb naps really badly and so she's absolutely exhausted now . . . Not sure how much longer we can keep her up. looking forward to the 5.30 start tomorrow :'(

[akc74]

Our 16m old has always been an early riser but we've had 5am starts the last 2 days in spite of trying to stick to new times. And yesterday he had a shorter lunchtime nap than normal too, so I suspect he's overtired. Will keep persevering!

[Ruth_Baldock]

Akc74; we went through 5am starts when S was about 15-17 mo and we had some great success with "wake to sleep", if you've heard of it? Also down to teeth, he was getting his first set of molars at the time.

[akc74]

Thanks Ruth, have heard of WTS and may try if this 5am thing seems to stick. He has his first molars, but the top canines have only recently surfaced so I think teeth are also part of the picture.

If it settles back to 6ish I feel perhaps I should be grateful for that and let it be (and go to bed earlier myself as one forumite suggested last time I brought this up!)

[snowboarder]

Ugh 2.5 yr old still on 5am wakes. Don't remember it bring this bad before!! When will it stop? He's banging the side of his cot and singing bananas in pyjamas theme tune ATM. Gah.

[Ruth_Baldock]

SB; perhaps time to cut out naps? A friend is doing this as her daughter was waking at 4:30am every morning and she shouted through the duration of her "nap" too. She now wakes at 7am :)

[snowboarder]

But mostly he crashes at half one and I have to wake him at 3 usually (I know if he woke later he prob wouldn't need it and maybe needs to break the cycle etc)...would def stop naps if he was protesting. And his brother sleeps then too so it's my hour (ish) of zen time.

[Gussy]

Mines an early riser - 5.30am normally, but this week he's been doing 4.30am every morning. Just lovely. He woke up toddler 2 last night and we were all awake until about 6.30am, when hubby then got up had a shower and it woke the early riser again. Arggg.

I'm convinced the whole early rising is due to overtiredness, but I just can't get him to sleep longer at lunch. Doesn't matter what I do he rarely sleeps longer than an hour/hour and a half and wakes up crying/tired.

Just HATE the early mornings. Especially on top of toddler 2's multiple night wakings. I'm NOT having any more kids thank you very much. :)

[jollybaby]

Ok so it's nearly a month on and Miss JB is still waking at 5.45 on the dot rather than 6.45 pre clock change. There's been a bout of illness and teething along the way, but this has now passed and I had hoped she would gradually start sleeping later. It seems like her body is programmed to wake up at this time. Any tips? Is it worth trying the wake to sleep thing? She normally naps 11.30 til 1 ish and bedtime is 7- 7.15. She also goes to nursery 3 days a week and on these days she may have a nap in the car on the way home around 6. I know this is not ideal but it's hard to keep a 14 month old awake in a warm dark car for 50 mins.

Roll on summertime!

[hellosailor]

I have heard good things about wake to sleep method working, and I think the good thing is that if you did it for 3 nights in a row and it wasn't working, then I think you could give up, safe in the knowledge you had given it a whirl?

In the babywhisperer she says to do the jiggle 30 mins before the usual wake time (5:15) but somewhere else - I actually think it may have been on a post on a different thread by the sleep expert who sometimes posts on the forum childsleepsolutions - apologies to her if I'm misremembering - it says 60 mins, so you would try at 4:45.

I am categorically not a sleep expert - ha! But to my mind it makes more sense to try 30 mins as it suggests in baby whisperer, as you would be disrupting the last sleep cycle miss jb is doing which I would have thought would be the idea, but perhaps if childsleepsolutions reads this post, she can explain the sleep science behind doing it at an hour rather than my foggy guesswork! Hope it works!

[jollybaby]

Thanks hs I may give it a go. Next question - how much do you wake them? I'm assuming it's just so they open their eyes and stir rather than strip off the bedding out of the cot type waking?

[hellosailor]

Yes you want to jiggle them enough to disrupt the sleep cycle they're in and start a new one, but not enough to wake them up properly, the horror! It's been a while since I read it but if I remember correctly in the baby whisperer it says to put a hand on the tummy (or more likely back if miss jb is a tummy sleeper now that she's older) and jiggle them, or replace a dummy if they have one etc (guessing miss jb doesn't have a dummy but just to give you an idea of the degree of of 'waking' that's suggested.)

I tried this (with some success) a few months ago when mini sailor was a few months old to lengthen naps, if anything I found I wasn't waking her enough, for fear of waking her completely! I guess if you can get them to stir properly and maybe open their eyes for a second or two then that would be ideal - but dicey!

[Trish]

My son is 12 months old and has been waking between 4.30 and 5.30 each morning. He's been doing this since he managed to start sleep through at around 8 months-ish. I'm working full time so finding it quite tough. Any tips on how I could get him to sleep to 6.30 in a morning? He has nap in the car at around 7.15-8am, but sometimes babbles for half the journey. He sleeps for an hour at nursery at lunchtime then has another nap when we drive home at around 4.30pm. He goes to bed around 6.45/7pm.

What's this wake to sleep thing all about? It sounds like it means me waking an hour earlier - not sure I can physically do it!!! And he's pretty restless all through the night because of all the things the other mummies mention above - mainly teething, although he keeps catching colds along with conjuncitivitis from nursery.

Almost too tired to deal with problem but have tried to hope that it will go away/settle once clock change settles down but it hasn't.

[hellosailor]

wake to sleep is a method whereby you disrupt a baby's sleep cycle so that they start a new one and hopefully sleep through the time they usually wake up if it's a habitual waking. I think if it was going to work in terms of breaking the habit of a habitual waking then it would take 3 days or so of the baby not waking up at their habitual time, because you were using this method, to change the habit. Some people I know have found it to work brilliantly, i.e the baby has slept through the time they usually get up, others have not found it worked - the baby still wakes at the same time. People also use it to lengthen naps if a baby always wakes at the first sleep cycle of 30-45 mins, whatever it is in the case of your baby. (i.e you might do the jiggle at 20 mins or 30 mins.)