Battling early morning wake ups
Baby wakes up at 5am. Crying. What do you do? I know most will go to your baby and try and feed or rock back to sleep. Sometimes it works and both go back to sleep. Other times, it doesn’t and here you are at 5:30/6am playing and starting both your days. Milk for baby, coffee for mommy! Probably going to be one of those days so you’ll compensate with an earlier nap. Sometimes this is a rare occurrence, other times it becomes a habit. If you are struggling with early morning wake ups, read on!
I experienced the early morning wake up with my daughter shortly after we did night training. Some days were harder than others and it felt like it lasted forever! I think looking back though it was less than a week and everyday improved so I knew we were working towards a goal. I knew I had to be consistent as possible. Here are my top tips for battling an early morning wake up.
Take some time to see what your baby does. The first thing I do when she wakes is I take a some time to see if she will self resettle. Those first few days she didn’t! Woke up at 5, I ended up starting her day earlier than I wanted and we just moved nap slightly earlier. Thankfully, by day 3 she was waking closer to 545/6am. Still early but not outrageous! And to my surprise, she started going back to sleep by 6:15/6:30 and would wake at 7am. Somedays if I do hear her rustling before 5:30am, she always manages to go back to sleep.
Make sure sleep environment is conducive for sleep. One thing that helps is we keep the room super dark, but there is some light that shines in that she knows it is daytime. Not enough to wake her up, but enough for her to know its morning or daytime when she is awake. We also keep the room cool with the aircon on. She sleeps alone so there are no other disturbances. We live on the 41st floor so not much outside noise so we do not play white noise.
You need to follow the schedule. As much as possible, you are working towards getting on schedule and that will never happen if you continue to adjust the timings because baby woke up early. One goal is to start to follow an age appropriate schedule. Good timing is the key.
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