Understanding and Managing Early Wakes in Babies and Toddlers

Having an early riser in the family can be knackering for everyone – there are plenty of things you can tick off before accepting defeat and starting your day in the early hours. Firstly, what is defined as an early wake? A wake an hour before the time you’d like your little one to be is deemed an early wake. So if your desired wake time is 7 am then any wake before 6 am is an early wake and should be treated as a night wake.

Why Early Wakes Occur:

1. Sleep cycles – Beyond four months old your baby will go through sleep cycles throughout the night – these sleep cycles are harder to link in the early hours as they haven’t built up the sleep debt to help them easily go back down.
2. Hunger – They may be waking early if they need a feed or, if they didn’t eat well the day before, they may be waking hungry.
3. Environmental factors – Temperature, light and noise can all contribute to early wakes.
4. Overtiredness – If your little one’s naps aren’t age-appropriate or they’re having trouble sleeping at night, they may become overtired, which often contributes to early waking.
5. Under Tiredness – Opposite to overtiredness there are only so many hours your little one can sleep in a 24 hour period so if they’re having mega naps in the day they might not be able to sleep a full 12 hours overnight.
6. Circadian rhythm – If your baby has consistently woken up at 4/5am, their body will have adapted to this as their natural wake-up time.

Understanding Early Wakes:

Try to work through the above one by one to ensure you’re supporting your baby and giving them the best chance of getting that later wake. Here are a list of things you can do for each of the issues presented above.

Sleep cycles: Work on encouraging your baby to self settle – if they’re able to link their sleep cycles without needing your help then they’re more likely to be able to settle themselves in the early hours.

Hunger: Keep on top of their diet and milk intake – work with them to get their calories in during the day instead of overnight.

Environmental factors: Check the temperature of the room in the early hours – are they wearing enough layers? Do you have good black out blinds? Use white noise to drown out other sounds that could wake them.

Overtiredness: Ensure they’re having consistent age appropriate naps.

Under Tiredness: Check they aren’t having too much day sleep and also that the last nap isn’t too close to bedtime so they have had enough time to build up the sleep debt needed to get them through the night.

Circadian Rhythm: If they are waking early, keep them in a dark unstimulating room until closer to their desired wake time. Getting up early will just reinforce the early wakes.

Toddlers and Preschoolers

If you’ve got a toddler/preschooler who’s an early riser you can use a sleep training clock so they have some awareness of if it’s still night or if it’s morning. You can always use this along with a reward chart. When purchasing a clock ensure it’s able to have a warm red light at night – don’t use one with a blue light on overnight.

Work through the above and see what tweaks you might want to make. If they used to sleep later and suddenly aren’t, it could be developmental so may pass naturally. There will also be the child’s temperament to consider, naturally we tend to either be a night owl or a morning lark.

If you’d like help to work through this or aren’t sure how to support your baby to set them up to give them the best chance to sleep until later, I’d love to talk with you about how I can help.

Jess – a.k.a. The Sleepy Avocado is a gentle Sleep Consultant based in Winchester. Jess takes an holistic approach to sleep focusing on making small changes and adapting settling methods before embarking on any formal sleep training. Her ethos is about parents supporting their baby to figure it out themselves rather than trying to force them to sleep.

Jess offers online or in home consultations with tailor made plans. She also offers troubleshooting calls. To find out more contact her for a discovery call.