Troubleshooting Early Mornings
Early morning wake ups can be so tough! Parenting is hard enough…we really don’t want it to start at 5AM!
Unfortunately for all of us non-morning loving people, babies and toddlers are biologically wired to get up early. Anytime between 6-7AM is pretty average for most little ones! Because of this, I only consider it an early morning wake up if baby is up before 6AM, anything after that is fair game.
Early morning wake ups are a challenge for many families, its common for babies and toddlers to wake up between the hours of 4-6AM and struggle to fall back asleep. This is because early morning sleep is typically very light, REM stage sleep and this along with the fact that they have already slept for a number of hours means even a slight disruption can wake them for the day. The good news is that if your little one is consistently waking up before 6AM there are things we can do to push that wake up later!
The first step in solving your little one’s early mornings is determining what type of wake up they are having. Yes, there are two types!
1) Early morning wake: When your baby wakes up before 6am after less than 11h of sleep
2) Early morning rise: When your baby wakes up before 6AM after more than 11h of sleep
Let’s talk about true early morning wake ups first!
If your little one is consistently sleeping less than 11h overnight and waking up before 6AM, something is pushing baby to wake up earlier than they should! Here are the most common culprits of early morning wake ups, in the form of a checklist I use with the families I work with:
1) Is the room dark enough?
Early morning sunlight creeping in can be sensed by your child’s brain (even through their eye lids!) and signal that its time to get up. To prevent this, we want the room to be absolutely cave like dark, even at 6am! Go and sit in your child’s room with the blinds and door closed. After your eyes acclimate, can you see objects in the room? Artwork on the walls? If yes, its time to get to work on a blackout solution! One of my favorite solutions are BlackoutEZ blinds. You can also just tape up a good old garbage bag on the window and it will do the trick.
2) Is there overtiredness at bedtime?
This is a huge one! If your little one goes to bed too late (or after a day with not enough daytime sleep!) it can lead to an early morning wake up. This is because overtired babies produce higher levels of stimulating hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which impact production of melatonin (that super important sleep hormone!). With less melatonin being produced there isn't enough to sustain baby's sleep all night...and an early morning wake up happens. A good aim for bedtime is sometime between 6-8PM, depending on your little one’s schedule and age appropriate wake window. Trying an earlier bedtime for a few nights can sometimes make all the difference for some little ones!
3) Are daytime naps off?
Daytime sleep is so related to night (and early morning) sleep! If your little one is sleeping too much during the day, they may be waking early because of that. All babies and toddlers have a total amount of sleep they need in 24h. If a baby requires 14h of total sleep and they are napping for a total of 4h per day, it makes sense that they wake after only 10h of overnight sleep. Ensuring your baby has the proper distribution of sleep is key, and capping naps or even dropping one may be necessary to solve your early morning wake ups. If you aren’t sure how many naps your baby should be taking, you may want to download my free guide: “3 Easy Steps to Building Your Baby’s Ideal Schedule” , or check out my blog post on finding your baby’s ideal wake window which goes through all of the age average scheduling info you’ll need!
Another common nap issue related to early mornings is when the first nap of the day is happening too early. So often I talk with families whose baby is getting up at 5am, then going down for nap at 7am- and this totally is reinforcing their problem! First thing in the morning, babies seem extra tired because they have some leftover sleep pressure from their night, not because they immediately need a nap. Pull out all the stops to keep baby awake until their appropriate nap time (realistically 8-9am minimum for most babies) so that you don’t accidentally reinforce those 5am wake ups.
4) What is your little one waking for?
When your baby wakes at 5AM what happens? Do they join you in bed? Get a feeding right away? If something they look forward to is happening immediately upon your little one waking up, it could be the reason why they are waking early. Sometimes the fix for this is teaching baby the skills they need to fall back asleep on their own, and sometimes its about spacing things out a little differently in the morning routine to remove that instant gratification. Often with older babies and toddlers, I find shifting the morning bottle or nursing session away from being the first step of the morning wake up routine can be really helpful. Same story with screen time and older kiddos, sometimes eliminating that altogether can help them sleep later in the morning.
5) Does your little one fall asleep independently at bedtime?
Between the hours of 4-6am we are in REM sleep, which means lighter sleep, and frequent transitions between sleep cycles. If your little one requires assistance to fall asleep at bedtime (feeding, rocking, laying with them etc.) they will struggle to connect their sleep, especially during the early morning hours. Until we address this factor and teach sleep skills, other strategies to fix early mornings may not be fully successful. If you have no clue where to start in teaching your baby how to initiate sleep independently I have you covered! Let’s book a sleep evaluation call here to chat about how my 1:1 sleep support can help you teach sleep skills AND curb those early morning wakes.
Now shifting gears, how do we stop early morning rising?
For early risers who have already slept for 11 or more hours, it’s all about shifting baby’s schedule later! Many parents are tempted to just move bedtime later to shift the schedule, but this is not going to help. That late bedtime (or longer period of awake time before bed!) will possibly result in an even earlier morning wake up. Instead we need to shift their ENTIRE day.
To do this, you’ll start by pushing baby’s first nap to start later. I like to use the following minimum put down times for nap 1:
3 nap schedule: 8:00am (working towards 8:30am)
2 nap schedule: 9:00am (working towards 9:30am)
1 nap schedule: 12:00 (working towards 12:30pm)
Following nap 1, subsequent naps and bedtime should also be shifted later based on nap 1 end time. If your baby is on a wake window schedule you will use your regular length wake windows for the remainder of the day. For babies on a by the clock schedule you will want to shift subsequent naps and bedtime later as well.
I know , I hear you…your little one is going to be overtired as you stretch them for a later put down, especially if they have been up since 5AM! This is unfortunately a necessary trade off to shift the schedule. I would much rather see overtiredness here before nap 1, then before bedtime.
Early mornings take time to fix!
Once you determine and address the root causes behind your little one’s early mornings it will take TIME to fix them! It can take weeks for the body’s sleep wake clock to shift, and old patterns to change. In the meantime, make sure you have a plan in place for how you will respond to your little one during these early mornings! I always recommend treating anything before 6AM like you would treat a night wake up. This will of course look different for every family, but allowing your little one to get the party stated at 5AM will just continue the exhausting pattern!
If you are tired of your 5AM wake up calls and can’t seem to figure out why they are happening, I would love to help you troubleshoot on a 30 Minute Consultation Call. If your early mornings are part of bigger sleep challenges let’s book a Sleep Evaluation Call to talk about how together we can work together to get nights, naps AND early mornings on track!
