Lucy seems to be quite well-adjusted to her new big sisterhood. The only thing that troubles us is her new, brutally early wake-up time.
Back in the day, Lucy’s sleep “patterns” (if you could call them that) were a nightly adventure for us. But pretty much ever since Lucy “learned to fall asleep on her own”:/news/2006/taking-the-plunge/ at night, she has been a champion sleeper — often snoozing away until 7:30, 8:00 am or even later. For quite some time, she was clocking a solid thirteen hours of sleep at night, supplemented by a nice, fat daytime nap.
But, whether it is due to the addition of a new family member or the summer sun’s rising, Lucy has begun to wake up earlier and earlier. Papa (who is on morning-duty with Lucy, bless his heart) was able to handle it pretty well when the internal alarm was hovering around 6:30 am. But we’ve been thinking we need to take some serious action, because lately Lucy has been popping up around 5:30 am. (One of our neighborhood friends calls this “the butt-crack of dawn.”) And it’s not just for Papa’s sake that we’d like Lucy to sleep in a bit: the child herself seems tired, often waking up extremely grumpy and somewhat hysterical after her afternoon naps.
This weekend we tried the simplest of adjustments which we’ve read about, and so far we’re cautiously optimistic. Each of the last two nights, we put her down for bed considerably earlier — around 6:30 pm instead of 7:30 — and she has slept till 6:30 each morning. Hooray! (Papa can’t believe he’s so overjoyed about being allowed to “sleep in” till 6:30 on Memorial Day, but that’s another story.) Will it hold? And why in the world does this trick work?
We feel your pain. We’re reading the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child book as well and so far have been amazed at it’s accuracy for Eli’s sleeping. This last week, when he turned 13 mos., he’s started waking up at 4:30 am! We finally just let him cry himself back to sleep. 4:30 is way too early for him to be rested and he isn’t. We also didn’t want to encourage him to keep waking up this early by going in to check on him or giving him a bottle, etc. I think it may be the birds that are waking him. I’m not sure of that. It’s still mostly dark at 4:30 but the birds are loud! We also are suspecting that his sleep cycles are changing due to brain development for his age. (But honestly, who knows!)
I feel your pain. OMG, do I feel your pain.
If you need to distract her at 6 am, you can always come to breakfast at our house. Nine times out of ten? We’re already up with Grace.
Butt-crack of dawn gets said alot at our home! Mo goes through phases, and lately we are blessed to find that if our huge cat Boomer climbs into his crib, Mo will stay in bed petting the cat rather than yelling to be let out.
Praying she keeps sleeping for you all.
Abby hasn’t pushed it to the butt-crack of dawn yet, but also has pushed her wake up earlier since the 2nd week of CST. The first week she slept in ’til 8:30 – too bad that didn’t last!
We definitely have loud birds at our house too and they really do start revving up at the butt-crack of dawn. Then again the neighbor’s dog barking at 6:30 doesn’t help either- even on the weekend. Anyone know the protocol about speaking to one’s neighbor’s about things like this?
Here’s to the Weissbluth strategy sticking for Lu!
I have recently found a solution! (and by the way…I feel like very parent I talk to is going through this right now). We had blackout shades on all of our girls windows but there was still a little light cracking through on the sides. Curious…and very desperate…I went to Joann’s ready to drop about $1000 on expensive blackout fabric if ment we could sleep past 5:30. Turns out, lucky me, there is a great fabric called budget blackout for $5.99 a yard. I bought enough to cover the windows and then some to make sure no light would leak in. I used thumbtacks (like I said, desperate!) to completely cover everything including a few inches away from the window on all sides. The curtains hide where the thumbtacks go into the wall so I didn’t really care that much. Ahhhh…sweet relief! We are now a 7:45 – 8:30 kinda family! : )
: )
Maddy wakes at the butt-crack of dawn…anywhere from 5:45 to 6:45. And if she isn’t the one waking at that time it is Lydia. But they go down between 7:30 and 8pm, so nothing to claim to much about. But I must say, I miss sleeping to 7am. This to shall pass and I am sure when they are teens Iwill hate waking them up at noon!