How do I stop my baby or toddler waking early in the morning? This is a question I get asked a lot.
In this post, I will share the reason why your baby or toddler may be waking early in the morning and exactly what you can do to solve early morning waking.
Table Of Contents
Make your toddler’s room as dark as a cave
A common cause of early morning waking in both children and adults and children is quite simply being woken by light.
The hormone Melatonin is responsible for regulating our “circadian rhythm” or body clocks. This hormone is produced in the brain’s pineal gland due to lack of exposure to light.
Melatonin production begins in the evening, then continues to release at night as we sleep through the hours of darkness. When the sun comes up and light comes in, the melatonin levels fall and, for us adults, stays low until the following evening.
So when light creeps into your toddler’s room in those early hours, their melatonin levels fall and they wake.
How do I blackout my child’s room?
Personally, I find that a blackout blind and linked blackout curtain combination is the best way to keep unwanted light out of your child’s room. I have also previously used a Gro Blind, which is a blackout blind that “suckers” directly onto the glass on your child’s window.
Blackout Hack
If you are travelling to a place without blackout blinds, or simply need a quick solution at home, try this;
If you wet one side of a sheet of tin foil, it will easily stick to the glass of the bedroom window, creating a simple and cheap blackout blind.
Treat Early Morning Wakings As Night-Time Wakings
If your baby woke at 1 am, you probably wouldn’t say “oh well, that’s us up for the day then”. Instead, these wakings are treated as nighttime wakings. Nighttime wakings should be dealt with using low lighting and hushed voices, maximising the chances that your child will fall back to sleep quickly.
So when your child wakes at any time before 6am, remember that it is still “the night” and should be treated as such. As you implement the steps that I will share below and your child begins sleeping closer to or beyond 6am, you can edge this “it’s not daytime until…” time to 7am.
Look at your child’s routine in the day
One major cause of early morning waking is often not anything you’re doing at night, but your baby’s day time routine.
Napping Too Much
If your baby or toddler naps too much in the day, they won’t need as much sleep at night and will be up and bouncing often far too early.
Napping Too Early
Babies and toddlers who have been up since the crack of dawn are often on their knees by early to mid-morning and will enjoy a long nap. By having this nice long nap this early in the day, it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of early morning waking.
Napping Too Late
When children nap too late in the day it has an impact on how well bedtime goes, which often throws off the whole night and can contribute to early morning waking.
Not napping enough
This seems counter-intuitive, but if a baby or toddler isn’t getting all of the naps that they need, they may be overtired. Not only will this have an impact on their behaviour, mood and happiness, but it can also cause a troublesome bedtime, followed by deeper sleep early on and yes, you guessed it, early morning waking.
So when & how much should my baby be napping?
I explain all of my recommendations for routine for babies and toddlers in the resources linked below. For children of all ages following my routines, the day begins at 7am, so regardless of what sort of night you and your children have had, this is the time that they must be awake. The routine outlines different nap schedules for different stages of development, check out which stage your baby is at.
How do I get my baby into a good napping routine?
Getting your baby to nap at allocated times when they currently have zero routine and are partying in the early hours can be daunting, to say the least.
Good news! I have a system for you to follow.
Just stick with it
Take a look at the routine resources, look at the nap implementation system and just stick with it. It’s not a “snap your fingers and it’s done miracle cure” (sorry). If after a day or 2 your child is still getting up early, keep going. Keep implementing the routine and your baby will naturally sleep later in the mornings. The people who this “does not work for” are usually the ones who have tried it for a day or so then become disheartened and given up.
With my four children, I can certainly testify that routine in the day equals a better night’s sleep for my children (and their Mummy). Sure, we’ve had times where we’ve drifted off course thanks to illness or holidays or other life distractions, but as soon as I got our daytimes back on track, our nights always improved too.
Good luck! Let me know how you get on.
Love Rhi x
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