BabyWinkz - Dealing with early morning waking
You need sleep too
Baby’s sleep time can be problematic, even more so when the mornings get lighter! Babies tend to be regulated by the daylight – so they’re tired when it’s dark and awake when it’s light – which is no consolation when the sun rises at 5am and baby wants to play! Here are 6 tips to help you deal with early morning waking in summer.
Solutions to dealing with early morning waking
1. Use very thick curtains that block out the light. If the nursery curtains let the light stream through, invest in some blackout curtains or use a thick sheet, blanket, duvet or even some old towels to keep the daylight out until you’re ready for baby to get up.
2. During naptime, don’t panic about the room not being pitch black so that baby can get used to sleeping during the day. This might help them to stay asleep or go back to sleep if the rising sun wakes them.
3. Put baby to bed later. If you put baby to bed when they are really tired, they may well sleep better and longer despite the sunshine in the morning.
4. Conversely, bringing bedtime forward can help a baby sleep later! Sometimes babies are overtired by bedtime and the quality of their sleep is not good, meaning they wake easily when it gets light. By putting them to bed earlier, before they get too tired, they’ll sleep better and for longer.
5. Treat early morning wakes in the same way as night time wakes. If you go in and make a fuss of baby in the morning, it’s no wonder when they want to get up and play! If baby wakes too early for your liking, go in and treat it as a night wake. In time they may learn that it’s not quite time to get up, and will either go back to sleep or play quietly.
6. Change daytime naps. As with moving bedtime, by changing the time of daytime naps – or removing one altogether – you can put baby to bed when they are properly tired and hopefully they’ll sleep longer. If you’re thinking of removing a nap make sure baby is ready for this though, otherwise they will just get tired and grumpy.
If all else fails, and it is close to your desired wake up time then start the day and by following the above tips in time your child’s body clock will adjust.
These are wonderful tips, Judy. I hope that parents will listen to you.
I am wondering if we tweak too much will we lose a solid routine schedule? Please advise. By this I mean, morning is morning and night is night. I do agree that we should play and wear them down in order to maximize more sleep time for very new and tired parents. I would love to realize your comments about tweaking their schedules too much, please.
Also, may I add that when parents adhere to your wonderful tips, they may also add classical music. Place a CD in the recorder and put it on repeat, so parents won’t have to continually get up and turn the recorder back on. Of course when you select repeat it’ll more than likely have to be one song, so choose a sweet soothing lullaby.
Again, thank you for sharing these great tips.