Why is my baby waking up so early?

[fuzzypeach]

My dd is nearly 5mo old. For the past week she has been waking up from 4:30-5:30 in the morning and it's driving me nuts. If I wake up before the sun rises I don't feel like I've really slept, I'm so tired... I feel bad complaining as she sleeps so well through the night (we cosleep, she rouses a few times to eat). We also EC but I can't get her to pee at night or in these early morning wakings even though I know she has to.

So why? She goes to bed at around eight. She used to sleep in until 7:30 which was great. It's not the sun. Her daddy's alarm does go off on weekdays at 5:30 which is the most common recent wake time, but it's not a regular alarm clock, it's a PDA that makes a soft choochooing noise. Could she be responding to that? He usually lets it go off a few times before he actually gets up :irked: but she's never seemed to notice it before.

She is always tired within 45 minutes and is ready to go back to bed... so around 6 or 6:30 we do and she'll sleep until 7:30 at which point I'll only have been asleep for thirty minutes and I feel angry and resentful. I don't like feeling like that towards her and I guess it's pretty selfish but I just feel so tired:(

Thanks for listening. If anyone has any advice please share!

[nannymom]

No advice just sending you sleepy support.

[Rivka5]

We have the exact same problem, so I'm listening too!

[eleanorm]

I experienced he same thing recently with my 6.5 month old ds. When he wakes during the night he nurses straight away and usually falls back to sleep quickly (we co-sleep). This time he stayed awake and started to babble and play which indicates that he wants to get up for the day. So I too got up at 5.30 only to be back in bed with him within an hour. We then rose at his usual 7.30.

But on the advice of someone, the next time it happened (a day or two later), I did something different. When he finished nursing and started to play, I turned my back to him, kept very still and quiet and tried to doze/relax. For about 10-15 minutes he was happy babbling but then started to fuss. I turned back around to him and he was happy to nurse again and started to drop off eventually. The whole process until he was fully asleep still took almost an hour, but at least I could lie down and doze a little during this time. He then stayed down until his usual time so it seemed to work. It also seems to have told him that it was too early to rise as the early morning starts have not become the norm.

Best of luck!

[alegna]

My dd has always slept through the night. BUT she always sleeps about the same amount of time. Right now she goes to bed at about midnight and wakes up at about 9. If I put her to bed at 8, she'd wake up at about 5. Try a later bed time.

-Angela