8 Month Old Eager to Wake at 4 Am

If he is in your room, and wakes up at 4, just lay there and let him play or talk to himself and you try to sleep. He is probably just use to the routine and you will have to make a new routine for him.

Hi, Two things I wanted to tell you.

First, at 8 months, try to get him down for only one nap. That could be the problem. I have a 15 month old and she's been napping once a day for a long time and it helps. Also, you may want to push his bedtime forward a half hour to an hour. My daughter has been on this schedule since she was one (up around 6:30-7am, nap for 2 hr's from 1-3 and bed by 8pm) Now yours is younger so you may need to adjust to his needs. Mine was napping at that age once a day around 11am.

Second, get him out of your room. He needs his own space and so do you! We have a problem with heat too. We have gas and when we turn it on,the living room is nice and comfortable but our bedrooms are so hot that it's insane. So we keep it off for the most part and at night my husband and I are fine under the comforters and blankets and we keep our daughter room heated with a small tower space heater. We use one by "lasko", it's a tower shape so the heat is spread throughout the room well, it's cool to the touch and it has a temp control and oscolates (did i spell that right??)AND... it wasn't expensive. I love it. I did a lot of checking for safety and this one is great. There are several others out there, but I would suggest a tower that you can place firmly on the floor and one with a temp control so you can set it how you want. My baby is sleeping great with it.

Hope this helps!! Good luck!

Just wanted to add a little bit to everyone else's advice...if you do try to put him to sleep an hour later, it's probably better to slowly adjust the time. You know, tonight put him to bed 10 or 15 minutes later than usual, and do that for 3 or 4 nights, then move it back another 15 minutes, etc etc. That way you don't end up with an overtired baby at 8 or 8:30 p.m. who CAN'T go to sleep because he's overwrought.
Good luck and I hope you get some much-needed sleep! =)

My son wakes up at 5 AM and has for ages (he's 18 mos). We finally stopped doing anything with him when he woke up - we would just leave him in the crib. He'd play, fuss a bit, and eventually put himself back to sleep. The first 3-7 nights will always be the hardest, but if you can get over that hump, it improves. I would recommend trying to get a heater to put in his room to try to get him out of your room before you work on this. You can pull this off if he's in your room, but it will be MUCH easier if he's in his own room.

I'm having the same problem with my 12 month old. He wakes up at 5am sometimes earlier!!!! When I put him in bed with my husband and I he falls back asleep for 1-1.5 hours. I've gotten advice recently to just leave him in his crib until 6am and he'll fall back asleep eventually. I hate doing it because he cries until I go get him. I think I'm being manipulated:)
My husband and I plan to let him cry it out this weekend when he wakes up and hopefully he'll learn to soothe himself back to sleep. Maybe this will help you.
Also, is there any way you can put the baby in his own room with a small heater fan? I'm sure you guys will all sleep better if he's in his own room.
Good luck!!!

you might try putting him down to bed at night a hour later. keeping him busy till then to help him stay awake. I know you like your time in the evening, but this might help more with the early rising. You can also try to change the baby's nap times to shorter naps or placing them earlier in the day. I know when I get to much sleep through a nap i don't sleep well or wake early. He also may be a early riser and that he is a morning person. a warm bottle also might help him to go back to sleep. One thing though make sure you have him at atleast a 45% angle or he will get ear infections from the milk draining into his enchaion tubes that are located on the sides of his upper throat. I learned proping the bottle probelms the hard way and my son got such a bad ear infection that he went into a asthma attack and raging fever and almost died.

you apparently need the extra sleep inthe morning, waking before 6 is a big downer...S.

My son went throught the same thing. He is now 1 years old. I tried several different things but what worked best was to put him to bed a little later. He now goes to bed at 8 and usually gets up around 6:30. Maybe try keeping him up for that extra hour even if he is exhausted and see if it works. Good luck.

We went through the same thing around 7 1/2 or 8 months. He would wake up around 4, and would go back to sleep after about an hour. I was given the advice that this was normal, that his sleep cycles were regulating and that the behavior would stop. And it turned out to be true! At least, the hour of wakefulness went away, but I was still going in to feed him at 4 (then putting him back in his crib after about 10 minutes of nursing) until I finally just stopped going when he woke at that time. He fussed only minimally for a couple of nights before going back to sleep. Now he sleeps straight through from 6:30-5:30 am. It's still a little early to rise, but it's much better! And daylight savings time is right around the corner...what was a 5 am wakeup is suddenly 6 am. So hopefully with a little more patience and maybe a slight adjustment on your part, this will just work itself out! Good luck.

maybe try getting him to stay up later in the evening. move his naps a little later into the day so he's not so sleepy be 7, maybe if you can himto stay up till 8 or 9, he'll sleep a little later in the morning. also, is it good and dark in your room in the morning? my daughter will sometimes wake up, just becasue it's bright in her room in the morning, but i put her in ed with me where it is good and dark and she goes back to sleep.

He should be able to entertain himself for a while. Both my kids do. Just give him something soft that he can play with in the morning and maybe a couple of crib toys (like the aquariums or the piano pads that attach to the side of the crib) and just let him entertain himself. That will probably buy you at least an hour.

The first suggestion I would have is try to keep him awake more during the day. If he isn't sleeping 12 hrs at night, you should be able to cut him down to one nap around noon. Also, with his crib in your room, when he wakes up he sees you. Therefore, he won't roll over and go back to sleep. Try to put a blanket over the side of the crib that faces you so that if he wakes up early, he won't see you and will maybe roll over and go back to bed. Hope this helps!

L.

When my oldest son was 8 months old, he was only sleeping about 7 hours at night and only two 2 hour long naps during the day. A friend of mine told me to read, "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and it changed our lives! I read the book and stuck to the principles. Within a week, (and it was a long, tearful week of training both me and my son) he was sleeping 12 hours at night and taking two, 2 hour naps per day. Clearly, he needed the sleep. He was so much happier, and needless to say, I had a new lease on life. The happy little boy and happy mother were worth a week of tears.
Because he was 8 months old by the time I learned these techniques (old habits die hard), every time we went on vacation or every time he got sick, we'd have to spend about 2 days getting back into a schedule (and that usually meant 20-30 minutes of tears). With my 2nd and 3rd children, I started using the principles outlined in the book in early infancy, and they were sleeping 12 straight hours and taking 2 long naps by the time they were 10 weeks old. Bedtime and naptime were always SUPER easy and they never cried at bedtime or naptime--in fact, my second two children were eager to take their naps and go to bed.

Hello I hope i can help try taking away one of the naps the one that is the closest to his bed time or the time that you want him to go to sleep, or one night try getting him to go to sleep later than he would like, also Is the room he sleeps in have alot of light coming thruogh it if so try put something over the window to keep the light out.

When you take him out of the crib to cuddle, do not talk to him. Speech will stimulate him and make it harder to go back to sleep. Take him from the crib, give him a pacifier, and cuddle until he settles back down to sleep. That is what I have to do every night. My son then stays asleep until 8:30AM. YAY!!!!!

Never, I repeat, Never, take away ant of his naps. Doing this will make it harder for him to go to sleep and will create fussiness that will get on your and his nerve.

If you're baby goes to bed at 7PM and doesn't get up until 6AM, that's 11 hours. That seems a bit long for an 8 month old baby. I think your expectations may be a bit high for a baby that age. Be careful of things you read that tells you what your baby is "suppose" to do. Each child is very different and I think it works best when we follow our children's clues about what they need.

I would suggest trying to move the bedtime back to 8 or 9 PM. Sounds like your son needs about 9 to 10 hours of sleep each night. If you want him up at 6 to 7 AM then put him down at a time when he will be back up at that time. As babys get older they usually drop a naptime, but sleep longer periods at night. Maybe you can expect him to sleep closer to 10 to 11 hours at night closer to his first birthday.

Good luck!!!

I recenlty posted about the same thing- but Will sleeps until 5, so I guess I should consider myself lucky:) Most responses told me that either he'd grow out of it, or I would just have to adjust to his schedule. My son is 18 months old, so I don't know if this would work for you, especially since he's in your room, but I recently started something that seems to be working. Will doesn't cry or anything when he wakes up, unless I don't get him soon enough. I put a nightlight on a timer in his room. It's off all night, and it lights up at 6. That's when I go in to get him. I've been doing this for about 2 weeks and this morning I watched him sitting quietly right before his light came on. When it did he knew I was coming and he stood up. Some may disagree with this method, but he's not crying, he just plays qquietly with his blanket and if it's dark he knows it's still night time. Good luck- I know how it feels:) K.

I had the same problem with my first son; when he'd wake up i'd give him a bottle then put him bk in his crib. But he had his own room at the time. He'd eventually fall bk to sleep on his own without fussing. If you're ready to put him in his own room, i'd buy an electric space heater to add a little extra heat to his room. They are relatively inexpensive, and despite all the warnings, are pretty safe. We have had to use space heaters for 5 years now and have not had any accidents. You just have to be careful where you place it. But there is light at the end of the tunnel; my son got over his 4 am awakings b4 he turned 1. Good luck to you!!