Peaceful Nights » Early Morning Wakings

Remember back to the days of waking when, well – whenever you woke? These days long gone, as parents we face early morning wakings as a matter of routine. When your baby wakes at 6am, you reluctantly get out of bed and greet the day. But when your baby thinks the day starts at 4 or 5am, it’s not as easy to happily greet the morn! Meg Faure, co-author of Baby Sense looks at strategies to deal with this bleary issue. The first step of dealing with the issue of early wakings is managing our own expectations. Babies and toddler do wake early - it is part of the deal. If your baby is over 6 months of...

Q: Thank you so much for the wonderful books. My son is almost 1 years old and he is waking up earlier each night. I used the sleep training method in the Sleep Sense book 3 months ago and it worked beautifully. He was falling asleep on his own and only waking at about 5 am. Then he started teething and it’s been awful. He now wakes up as early as 2.30am, some nights 3.30am, other nights 4.30am and just won’t settle himself. He has a cloth nappy as a sleep soother and he's very attached to it. When he would wake at night, he would sit up and reach for his soother and then lie down and go back to...

Remember back to the days of waking when, well – whenever you woke? These days long gone, as parents we face early morning wakings as a matter of routine. When your baby wakes at 6am, you reluctantly get out of bed and greet the day. But when your baby thinks the day starts at 4 or 5am, it’s not as easy to happily greet the morn! Meg Faure, co-author of Baby Sense looks at strategies to deal with this bleary issue. The first step of dealing with the issue of early wakings is managing our own expectations. Babies and toddler do wake early - it is part of the deal. If your baby is over 6...

Q: My 8 month old baby has always started her day at 4:15 / 4:30am. My husband and I are mow both EXHAUSTED and battling to cope with our day responsibilities.She goes down to sleep very easily at 6:30pm and doesn't wake up during the night for feeds - if she does wake up, she just wants her dummy and then goes back to sleep quite easily. The problem starts at around 4:15am when she starts niggling. We leave her for as long as possible as we were told by our clinic sister not to give her her bottle before 5:00am. We wait for as long as possible, give her her bottle - after a lot of screaming, but...

Q: Until recently our six-month-old baby was sleeping until 4:00, waking for a bottle and then sleeping until 6:30. This changed this week. He has taken to waking up at 3:00 for a bottle and then at 5:00 again. When he wakes up at 5:00am he is not interested in going back to sleep. I give him a dummy but he is wide-awake. During the day he is awake for 2-hour periods, he is put to sleep in his cot every night at 7:00 in a happy awake state and has a baby sense blanket. Our plan was to wait until he was six months and then cut back on his nighttime bottle but he has had a cold so we have left things as...