Early Morning Wake Ups: Why your baby is waking early and how to fix it!
Early Morning Wake Ups: Why your baby is waking early and how to fix it!
If your baby is waking up at 4 a.m. and you would do anything to sleep until 6 or 7 a.m. then you’re in the right place!
Early Morning Wake Ups: Why your baby is waking early and how to fix it!
My number one tip and that is to stop reinforcing these early morning wake ups with an early nap. You’re reinforcing the fact that they’re waking up at four AM by saying that’s okay, let’s take a nap at 7. there is going to be some discomfort while you’re making changes, you’re going to have to keep your baby awake until an appropriate nap time around 4 a.m. is when your baby’s melatonin production plummets, it basically stops. So when your baby wakes up at that hour it’s so much harder for them to get back to sleep.
Five ways of how you can fix these early morning wake ups:
- you have to have an appropriate wake up time, which is anywhere after 6 a.m. but before 8 a.m. If your baby is waking up around 4 A. M. and it’s before this appropriate wake up window, then you need to keep your baby in their room no matter what. You need to have a routine that your child knows it’s morning time and this is how we’re going to start the day every day. So you should have the same routine every single morning.
- Set your first nap of the day at the same time every single day. You want to make sure that you’re keeping that consistent, so that your child’s circadian rhythm gets into the swing of having one nap at the same time every single day. Generally nine a.m. is a typical first nap time.
- Check your child’s schedule. You need to make sure that they’re on an age appropriate schedule and make sure that they have proper wake windows for their age. If you’re unsure about age appropriate wake windows. I want you to grab my free baby sleep guide.
- Make sure that you have the child’s room completely blacked out at 4 a.m. when their melatonin stops producing and that sun starts coming up, their brain is being signaled that it is awake time but it is not.
- Make sure that you have white noise going in your child’s bedroom continuously all night long. This is going to help drown out any of the birds that are starting to wake up in the morning or garbage trucks going outside or anything else that might be happening outside of their room.
The minute you throw consistency out the window is the minute that everything is back at square one and all of your efforts thus far have been wasted. So stay consistent. It’s going to take a few weeks for your child’s circadian rhythm to adjust. Your child’s internal clock needs to be readjusted and that takes time. So don’t forget to get my free baby sleep guide, and check out this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8eT6oDz8qw , for more information on early morning wake ups.
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Missy Yandow
Pediatric Sleep Consultant
Potty Training Coach
