What to Do When Baby Thinks 5:00am is “Morning”

Scenario: Your baby or toddler has been sleeping GREAT, and then all of a sudden they are up at the butt crack of dawn, ready to play?!

While there can be mannnny reasons for early wakings, I have the fix for a particular situation:

Your child will gradually need less and less sleep per 24 hours as they develop and grow older. For example, a brand new newborn may need 20 hours of sleep out of every 24 hours, while a 6 month old only requires 14 1/2 hours of sleep out of every 24 hours. If they start getting too much of their daily total during the day, guess who’s literally going to be finished sleeping at 5am?

Use this strategy with care, as most babies I work with are chronically overtired, not the other way around.

Take a critical look at your child’s daytime sleep and compare it with their current age and developmental stage. You might have to try transitioning to fewer naps (for example, 3 down to 2), or shorten the current nap (example, 120 min down to 75) and if your child has the basics of healthy sleep habits down already, you should quickly start seeing morning wake times shift to a much more reasonable time 😌

If you are continually having struggles no matter what you have tried, I would love to work with you and pinpoint what’s going on! Click here to set up a free 15-minute discovery call to determine if my sleep coaching services are a perfect fit for your family.