How to manage your little ones early morning wake-ups is a topic I get asked about more than anything else.
If for no other reason, than between the hours of 4 AM and 6 AM there is no other place than we as parents would rather be than in our beds fast asleep and more than often our little ones have very different ideas.
The first thing to remember when addressing early morning wake-ups is that you need to be aware of the time that you can realistically expect your little one to sleep for at night.
For example, if you are regularly putting your 1 year old to bed at 6.30 then you can reasonably expect them to be able to sleep for between 10-12 hours. This means they are likely to wake anywhere between 4.30 AM and 6.30 AM – depending on their individual sleep requirements and you may find you have an early wakeup around 5AM simply because they have actually fulfilled their sleep needs.
Top 5 Tips on how to help you manage these early morning wake-ups
TOP TIP NUMBER ONE: Keep the bedroom dark
It is important to ensure that your little ones bedroom is as dark as possible. If the blue early morning light is coming through the window and hitting the back of your child’s eyes it will wake them despite their eyes being closed. Try and make their sleeping zone as dark as possible with the use of black out blinds and heavy curtains. Once you child has woken, it is crucial that you keep them in their darkened room even if it means holding them as darkness will help reset their circadian rhythm and encourage them to wake up later over a period of 5 to 10 days.
TOP TIP NUMBER TWO: Ensure there are no unusual early morning noises
Try and ensure that the noise in your child’s room is constant. Any abnormal noise particularly at 5 AM in the morning when they are coming out of light sleep will potentially cause them to wake. Think about investing in a white noise machine that you can keep on all night and that will block out external noise such as planes and the central heating kicking in.
TOP TIP NUMBER THREE: Check the room temperature in the early morning
Make sure that your little one is not waking early because they are either too hot or too cold. Our body temperature needs to drop around 5 AM to help us stay asleep and if your child is over-bundled this will not be able to happen and they may well wake. Equally, if they are too cold this will cause them to wake as well. In the winter months you might like to think about warming their bed with a wheaten bag before removing it and popping them back in it.
TOP TIP NUMBER FOUR: Check out the gap between nap-time and bed-time
Ensuring that your child is having the correct sleep dispersal throughout the day is also key to preventing early morning wakeups. Often if your little one is having too much afternoon sleep too close to bedtime it can lead to an early wakeup. It is also important to ensure that your child is having the correct awake-times for their age to allow sleep pressure to build and to curtail the rise of too much cortisol which can subsequently lead to issues with night waking’s.
TOP TIP NUMBER FIVE: Establish good sleep habits
Another cause of early morning waking’s can be habitual. If your little one is used to waking at 4.30 AM and they are coming out of their bedroom and interacting with you, then it is going to be important to set limits. You might like to invest in an a morning wake up sound clock or a gro -clock which uses light and pictures to alert your little one that is time to get up. You might also like to create a reward chart which allows them to win a small prize for staying in their room until the time that you agree they can get up.
If you have considered all the above and your baby is still waking then it might be time to look at an appropriate gentle sleep intervention which fits in with you and your family’s philosophy to help them sleep.
It is worth bearing in mind that morning interventions can take a lot longer than bedtime interventions because you simply don’t have science on your side at this time in the morning.
If you can’t quite work out how to piece it all together and need a fresh set of eyes, please do get in touch for an SOS sleep consultation.
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