Tips to minimise early morning wakes

Tips to minimise early morning wakes

Ahh, those early morning wakes. Once your baby starts consolidating night sleep and starts “sleeping through” without a feed, it can be a concern when they start waking early. And really, it’s fabulous that they are now sleeping all night. But 5AM IS too early to be starting your day and getting up. So here are a few things to try to help get morning to a more decent hour.

1. Make sure it’s dark

The slightest change in light can stimulate a wake up in babies and adults alike, so if you’re looking to avoid early mornings, it’s important to keep it dark. Especially coming into summer where it is getting light earlier and earlier. In terms of sleep, dark is your friend.

Keep your baby’s bedroom as dark as you possibly can, and I mean at least a 9 out of 10 dark. It really is worth investing in some blackout blinds and minimising as much light as possible.

2. Mask the noise

Sleep in the early hours of the morning is typically light REM sleep and external factors have a greater chance of waking your baby. 5AM in the morning can get noisy. Birds are chirping, neighbours start leaving in their cars, your husband gets up for work, and so on. This is where white noise can help mask those external factors.

3. Give it time

If you are only a few weeks into consolidating night sleep, it may just be a matter of time. Babies need to learn to consolidate sleep, and it takes time for their bodies to adjust. Give them that time and the 5AM wake should slide later and later.

4. Don’t make bedtime later

Don’t try putting your child to bed later to get him to sleep later. This will often backfire on you. Although it may seem like a rational strategy, your child will more likely than not end up waking up at the same time regardless. But now he’ll be missing more sleep than before due to his later bedtime.

5. Stick to your guns with morning time

Sticking to a minimum morning time to get up can help guide your child’s body into sleeping longer. What’s a realistic morning? I suggest it’s never before 6AM and ideally even later (seriously, children need a lot of night sleep).

As tempting as it is to try something different to “fix” the issue, once you’ve tried number one and two above, a consistent response can really be the best answer. There’s no reason you and your baby shouldn’t be getting all the sleep you need, but sometimes it takes a bit of time for them to reset their body clock. Keep persisting. And if you need a little more help, or really aren’t sure how to go about getting better sleep, Contact me. Or, go straight to booking a free initial call HERE. You don’t need to settle for less.