5 Tips for When Your Child Wakes Up Too Early

You thought you would get your sleep back once the infant/newborn/baby days were over, didn’t you? Think again! Your child (like most) is likely a ball of energy at the crack of dawn.

Before you try to correct an early rising problem, be sure that you have one. A toddler waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 isn’t unusual. Some kids just like to be up when the sun is up. This happens to a lot of kids who sleep well or go to sleep early. If your child is waking up around 6:00 AM, that’s probably just your lot in life. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

But if your child is waking up before 5:00 AM every day, you’ll need to take some steps to convince them to sleep longer. These tips may help.

1. It may be time to shorten nap times or reduce the number of naps. If your child is taking two naps, try dropping it down to one per day. This will extend the amount of time that she’s awake so she sleeps longer at night. Or maybe your child is taking epic four hour naps mid-day. Gently wake her up after two and a half hours. She’s probably rest at that point, just comfortable sleeping more.

2. Create a room conducive to sleep. Can you sleep when the sun is shining in your eyes? Our bodies are biologically wired to wake up when the light streams in. You can fight this behavior by darkening the room with heavy curtains and blinds. Keep some white noise playing so your child’s sleep isn’t interrupted by the sounds of other people moving around the house.

3. If your child is waking up with a soaking diaper, you can do two things. First, limit liquids before bed. Put at least an hour between the last drink and the time your child goes to sleep. This will give her an opportunity to pee and be changed for sleep. Two, you can insert a “diaper doubler,” which is an absorbent pad that gives the diaper more absorbency.

4. Some kids wake up hungry. If your child is waking up famished, you can either offer a high-protein snack just before bed, or move dinner closer to bedtime.

5. If you think your child is getting enough sleep, just waking up too early, you can begin the process of shifting their schedule. Start pushing all of their activities 10 minutes later each day. So breakfast is a bit later, nap is a bit later, dinner later, etc. In a week, you should be able to push their schedule an hour later so your child goes to sleep later and wakes up later.

How did you cope with a child who woke up too early?

Written by Stephanie Parker from SleepingBaby.com, inventors of the Zipadee-Zip

The motto for Sleeping Baby, makers of the Zipadee-Zip, is: "Inspiring Dreams One Night at A time," and that, in a nutshell, is how it all started…with one little dream that has since become the Parker family's reality. When Brett and Stephanie Parker's daughter, Charlotte, was born, the feeling that welled up inside of them was indescribable; they never realized until first looking into those baby blues of hers that they were even capable of that kind of love.

When it was time to transition baby from swaddling, the Parkers tried every sleep sack on the market and every swaddle weaning trick they could find for nearly two weeks and nothing worked to get baby Charlotte to fall and stay asleep.

Stephanie became determined to restore sleep and sanity to their household and set out to find a solution that would soothe Charlotte's startle reflex and provide her the cozy womb-like environment she loved so much but still give her the freedom to roll over and wiggle around in her crib safely. Out of sheer desperation and exhaustion, the Zipadee-Zip was born. The first Zipadee-Zip(R) Stephanie put together on her little sewing machine worked like magic!

To date tens of thousands of Zipadee-Zips have been sold and all from word-of-mouth marketing. It is so rewarding for the Parkers to see other parents and babies getting the sleep they both need and deserve!

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