Why is my little one waking up too early?
Image by Michal Bar Haim via Unsplash
“My 9-month-old is waking up too early”, “My 6-month-old keeps waking at 5 am”, and “My toddler just won’t lie in” are common complaints I hear from parents.
I’ve been there (with twins!), so I understand the tiredness and frustration that comes with it. If only they would just sleep an hour or so longer, the days might not feel so long, and four cups of coffee might not be so essential!
Unfortunately, you can’t just roll over and go back to sleep when your child is crying out for you at the crack of dawn. You’ve got to haul yourself out of bed no matter how exhausted you are – even if it’s mid a deep relaxing sleep.
The good news is, you don’t have to start your day at 4.00 am! There are things you can do to help bub stay asleep until a reasonable, less yawn-inducing hour.
What does waking too early mean?
What is a reasonable hour?
Everyone has a different idea of what ‘waking too early’ means.
Some of us wake at 5.00 am, ready to take on the day, whereas others struggle to make it out of bed by 9.00 am. A lot are probably somewhere in between.
In addition, it’s important to remember that adult sleep patterns differ from young children's. In fact, it’s not until around four years of age that their sleep patterns mirror ours.
For young children, waking up before 6.30-7.00 am is generally considered waking too early. So, if your little one is bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to start the day at 4.30-5.00 am, it’s important to remember that this isn’t a sustainable long-term option for them – or the rest of the family!
Sleep deprivation can start to set in and affect our day-to-day lives.
Understanding child sleep cycles
Children have 45-minute sleep cycles during the day and 2-4 hourly sleep cycles overnight where they fully wake. If they can settle independently when they wake, they’ll adjust position, cry out and then put themselves back to sleep.
The diagrams below show a child’s day and night sleep cycles:
The most restorative sleep occurs during the first half of the night.
Between 7.00 pm and 11.00 pm is the deepest sleep phase. This is due to the rise in melatonin (the sleep hormone) peaking around midnight and cortisol lowering. During this period, you can go into your little one’s room, put the laundry away and not even wake them. You could even have a party and not disturb them!
From 11.00 pm to around 3.00 am is still a deep sleep period, but your little one can enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, aka active sleep.
From 3.00 am to 7.00 am, your little one goes through periods of light sleep and awake cycles. This is due to a decrease in melatonin and a rise in cortisol that drives your little one’s circadian rhythm to wake for the day.
This means settling at this time of the morning is always difficult.
The pre-set internal sleep clock
Our circadian rhythm, better known as our body clock, is entrained or set by food, light and social interaction.
Because of this, if your little one wakes at 4.30 am, and any of these elements are introduced, you’re training the circadian rhythm to awaken at this time each day.
The vast majority of kids typically wake between 6.00-7.00 am. Waking up before this time is considered a ‘night waking’. Therefore, if your child wakes up before this time, you should respond to them in the same way you would if they woke at midnight.
Sleeping much past 7.00 am throws the body’s circadian rhythm off, leaving a feeling of jetlag – the internal time doesn’t match the external time.
Kids’ sleep needs vary as they get older. However, most little ones should be sleeping around 11-12 hours overnight and having age-appropriate naps during the day by around the age of nine months.
Unlike adults, children usually need an earlier bedtime and often wake earlier than we would like. Unfortunately, it’s simply the way they’re biologically wired.
You might want to re-think any visions you have of a lazy Sunday morning sleep in until 9.00 am right now, sorry!
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External factors that cause early morning waking
While you don’t have much control over your little one’s internal body clock, a range of external and environmental factors may also contribute to your little one waking up too early that you can control.
These include:
They’re too hot or cold
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If the temperature in your child’s room is too cold or too warm, it can disrupt their ability to fall asleep – and stay asleep.
The ideal temperature for optimal sleep is 18-20°c (about 65-68°F). It’s important to layer your bub appropriately for the temperature of their room. Most sleeping bags come with a layering guide based on their weight. Make sure you follow these guides closely, so your little one is comfortable.
They’re thirsty or hungry
Depending on their age and stage, it’s important to figure out whether your little one is waking due to hunger or thirst.
The room is too light
Once the circadian rhythm has fully matured, a key factor in how our sleep is regulated is through exposure to light or darkness.
Sleep is definitely easier for most children when the room is dark. Darkness facilitates the production and release of the sleep hormone melatonin.
Too much light, on the other hand, blocks the production of melatonin and signals to the brain that it’s time to wake up. This makes settling and resettling challenging.
On a scale of darkness, your little one’s room should ideally be an 8-10. What does that mean practically? If it’s a struggle to see if your child’s eyes are open or closed from a couple of metres away, that’s about perfect.
Black-out blinds are a great solution.
There’s too much external noise
Depending on where your baby sleeps, they may be subject to a wide range of external noises early in the morning, disrupting their sleep. This includes noisy birds, barking dogs, cars and garbage trucks.
While there’s not much you can do to stop these noises, you can help cancel them out using white noise. White noise often sounds like a low, steady whirring, buzzing, humming or shushing and includes things like:
A fan whirring in the background
A television with the sound down low
An air conditioner unit humming
A vacuum cleaner running
There are countless white noise machines on the market you can buy specifically for babies.
White noise is also a fantastic soothing tool for settling as it provides a consistent sleep environment and acts as a positive sleep association. It’s important to play it as loud as a running shower and continuously for the duration of naps and night-time sleep for it to be most effective.
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They rely on you to go to sleep
If your little one needs you with them to be able to go to sleep at the start of the night or throughout the night, you can’t expect them to put themselves back to sleep at 5.00 am.
Sleep associations are ‘things’ that bubs associate with falling asleep. They aren’t good or bad habits; they simply form part of how they’re used to settling to sleep. They include things like:
· Dummies
· Cuddling
· Feeding
· Singing
· Mobiles
There’s nothing inherently wrong with sleep associations unless they’re causing short naps or frequent night waking. If this is the case, you need to reconsider the effect the association is having on the quality of sleep for your baby and your family.
Ideally, you want your baby to self-settle with the right baby sleep training. This means even if they wake early and start making noise, they’ll quickly go back to sleep without you intervening.
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Their naps aren’t timed correctly
The timing of naps can have a big impact on waking too early.
The baby sleep routines I promote are 7.00 am-7.00 pm, with most sleep occurring between 7.00 pm-7.00 am.
The rationale is that nap times and bedtime align with biological sleep windows and age-appropriate awake times throughout the day. By six months, it emphasises a longer lunchtime nap as this is the most restorative nap of the day and the one they’ll keep until 2.5-3 years old.
They go to bed too late
Despite what many people believe, late nights for little ones equal disrupted night sleep and early wake-ups.
We’ve all heard our parents and grandparents say, “Keep them up later, and they’ll sleep later in the morning”. This is absolutely a myth.
The later you keep your little one up, the more overtired hormones they produce. This stops them from entering deep sleep cycles and often ends with overnight and early morning waking. If your little one is overtired, get them to bed early.
A bedtime between 6.00 pm-7.00 pm falls within a biological sleep window where hormones fluctuate in readiness for sleep, and settling is generally easier.
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Waking too early won’t last forever!
While some children have low sleep needs and are early risers, most healthy, full-term babies sleep 11-12 hours overnight together with their age-appropriate naps throughout the day.
However, like everything with children, sleep needs are different. So, while one is an early waker, one may be a later waker, and that’s completely normal.
If yours is waking too early for you but is within the limits of normal waking, try to adjust your life according. This might mean going to bed earlier to ensure you get enough sleep to deal with early waking.
Try not to wish these days away. The days are long, but the years are short. Sometime in the not too distant future, you’ll be the one up early trying to drag them out of bed to get to school on time!
If you would like to find a solution to your little one’s early morning waking, book an obligation-free 15-minute consultation today.