[Miss Lily]

So, I've gone from being on the brink of post natal depression with a screaming baby who would take three 20 minute naps a day max!!, to a new lease on life and happy happy mum of a 9 week old that sleeps on his own from 7-2/3 and 3-5/6 am. Daytime naps are much better too, but still a work in progress... Nevermind!


Just one question now though, my boy is waking up around 5ish every morning despite last feeding as late as 3. So am guessing its not hunger thats getting him up. I often try to put in his dummy and settle him for more sleep, but this may work till about 6 am max only at which time I figure its his bodys preferred time to wake and get him up, feed, play/change for the usual day time 1.5 hrs until see tired signs and put back to bed. He falls asleep happily and will sleep 1.5-2 hrs.

Question is – should I ‘start his day’ when he wakes up at 5/6 or should I treat it as a night waking and do a quick feed and back to bed? It would be better for me to go back to bed most days and get up for the day 8/9 instead but all the books (!) seem to advocate a 7 am wake time.

What do you think?

[axiomae]

It's normal for babies to wake between 5 and 8, depending on the child. They do need about 11-12hours of night sleep though, so a 6am wakeup for a baby that sleeps all night is totally normal and wonderful! In my house I treat any waking before 6am as a night waking and give a quick feed and back down again. From 6am we start the day. DD generally wakes between 6 and 6.30am. You can't expect too much from a little baby - sounds like yours is doing wonderful!

[Alpha_Chook]

Eamon at the same age was an early riser and stayed like that until he started moving more, rolling, then crawling then walking etc. It would depend on whether there was light in the sky as to how we approached it, its hard convincing a baby to fall asleep and to pretend its night time when theres sunshine

[Jenflea]

i find the birds outside wake my daughter, we've got an awning and block out blind so it wasn't the light that did it.
I treated (as PP said) wakings before 6 or 6.30 as a night waking and brought her in with us to have a feed and further sleep. Now at 2 she still likes a snuggle in bed in the morning after she wakes up at 7 or 7.30.

[Miss Lily]

Such good reassurance! Thanks all :-)
I really like the idea of awake before 6 being a night feed. Whats all this fuss about starting their day at 7am?! It seems every other mum I know has this down pat. But I refuse to wake him and start the day at that time if he's fast asleep; sleeping baby = sleeping mumma to me!! So I'm perhaps just too selfish to sabotage my morning 'sleep in'?! By the way I think its not a sunlight or birds issue, his crib is far away from the window. Strange though that he started doing 6-7 hour stretches of sleep on his own at the start of the night, but wont follow that with another 5-6 hrs too... Im just curious as to why honestly, as overall I know I have a reaonably easy baby on my hands.

[Missmarymack]

My DD is 7 weeks old and her pattern is quite similar. She sleeps from 7:30-8ish to anywhere from 2-4 and then usually wakes again 2 hrs afterwards for another feed. She then continues to feed frequently (every 1-2 hrs) until bedtime the next night. I assume it is quite normal to do the one big stretch overnight and then smaller ones.
I also treat anything before 6am as night and afterwards day. I tried using 7am as a cutoff for DD1 but she wanted to be up at 5, so 6am was my compromise!!

[akkiandmalli]

I guess it depends on your day ... My DS has always been the early riser ( like myself) where dd is the the late riser ( like DH ) which can be a problem on school days where we leave the house by 8 (I work)

[~Supernova~]

DS has always been a very early riser, waking any time between 4 and 5 am...yuck. The last two weeks we have stretched his bedtime out til 8 (was 6, as that was when he was tired) and he is sleeping until 6, so that is much better!

[Joey11]

Such good reassurance! Thanks all :-)
I really like the idea of awake before 6 being a night feed. Whats all this fuss about starting their day at 7am?! It seems every other mum I know has this down pat. But I refuse to wake him and start the day at that time if he's fast asleep; sleeping baby = sleeping mumma to me!! So I'm perhaps just too selfish to sabotage my morning 'sleep in'?! By the way I think its not a sunlight or birds issue, his crib is far away from the window. Strange though that he started doing 6-7 hour stretches of sleep on his own at the start of the night, but wont follow that with another 5-6 hrs too... Im just curious as to why honestly, as overall I know I have a reaonably easy baby on my hands.

At that age I didn't wake DS either, but now he's a bit older (9 months), to get him up by 7 just sets up his day so much better - he gets decent morning and afternoon sleeps at good times and settles and sleeps through overnight much better. There's some theories that the time of day sleeps one day affects various rising and napping times the next (not just how well they sleep overnight).

Babies sleep in cycles and have light sleep/ waking throughout the night then go into deeper sleep agan. Your DS may be waking during the 6-7 hours but getting himself back to sleep; but at 5 or 6am he's waking up and not doing so - is there anything you do differently at that time when he wakes that sends him different signals? If you want him to sleep a bit longer in the morning, then you can actually try putting him down earlier at night - it seems counter-intuative but what you're doing is moving the times that he is in lighter/ deeper sleep cycles, so hopefully he is in light sleep/ waking a little earlier and so treats it as still sleep time, not waking time.

I don't think you should change anything if you're ok with what's happening now, obviously, but if you want a different outcome then it's worth trying something different.