5 Reasons Your Baby Is Waking Up Before The Sun

Why does your baby insist on waking up BEFORE the sun? I get it. No one wants to be up at 5 am for the day.  There’s only so much coffee a Mama can drink before it starts losing its effect!

I’m going to get into the top 5 reasons why your little is waking so early so you can get your baby sleeping through the night, but first- what does early really mean?

To some, early may mean before 5:00 am, and for others that may be 8.00 am. Unfortunately for the moms of the 8:00 am club I’m here to tell you that the morning can in-fact start at 6:00 am.

I tend to treat any waking before 6:00 am as a night-waking. Once 6 strikes it’s fair game. However, that 5-6 hour is a tricky one.

It can be very common for young babies to wake during this time and stay up for the day. I would prefer wake-up to be no earlier than 6:00 am but strive for later.

Ok now that we’ve got that covered. Here are the top 5 reasons your little one is waking so early

1) Bedtime Blunders

How does bedtime look? Do you have a solid bedtime routine established? Is your baby going down at night for an age-appropriate wake time?

Often, early mornings can be due to the last wake time lasting too long. Seems backward, doesn’t it?

Back before I became a certified sleep consultant I would keep my first child up late at family events.

My father-in-law would inevitably say something like  “Since she is up so late tonight she should sleep in tomorrow morning right?!” Too bad it doesn’t work that way.

Common sense would tell us that if we put our baby down later she will sleep in later. But that’s not how our little one’s circadian rhythm works, unfortunately.

A child with a bedtime that is too late can result in early mornings. It can also result in night wakings!

2) Sleep Prop

Does your child have independent healthy sleep habits? Or does your child rely on a sleep prop to get to sleep for naps and bedtime?

Remember that a sleep prop is anything that is external. It’s a habit or item that gets our children to sleep.

Soothers, nursing, rocking, driving around in a vehicle are all examples of a sleep prop.

Teaching your child to sleep on their own is the first step to achieving later mornings.

If your child uses a sleep prop please leave a comment below and let me know what it is!

3) Developmental Milestone

Is your child going through a big milestone? Is she sitting up on her own? Standing, walking or talking?

I remember when our first child was just over a year and a half old and her vocabulary blew up out of nowhere.

Sure enough right at the same time she stopped napping during the day and was waking up throughout the night!

But with consistency and time, she went back to her old self. We often don’t think that something physical or mental like that could really hinder sleep; but it sure does!

The key here is being aware of any changes your child is going though. If we were to blame a growth spurt or milestone for every sleep blunder we would never get anywhere!

4) Too Much (or too little) Daytime Dreaming

Unfortunately there are some children out there that won’t truly start to sleep past the sunrise until they drop their nap completely. But this is the exception not the rule.

I like to assume that all children under the age of 3 do well with some daytime sleep until proven otherwise. As our children get older however, there is a fine line that takes some playing around with to find the sweet spot. This is where having the support and experience of a certified sleep consultant really comes in handy.

Capping naps for some older toddlers can be necessary to keep bedtime going well and early mornings at bay.

A too late bedtime is not the only way your baby can get overtired. If your child isn’t getting the right amount of daytime shut eye it can backfire with an early start to the day.

So how much sleep is that anyway?

Check out my guidelines for how many hours of sleep your child should be getting per 24 hour period

5) Up with the Sun

To put it bluntly: light profoundly affects our sleep. Way more then you may think.

When working with a new client I will always ask how dark their little one’s room is on a scale from 1 to 10. I want it to be a 9 or a 10 on that scale.

Do not underestimate it. Darkness is essential to sleep.

After about 3:00 am, our melatonin levels start to decrease. It decreases to get us ready to get up for the day. Mix that with some sunlight and we will be awake if we plan to be or not.

So keep your child’s room as dark as possible using whatever means necessary. Only open the blinds when it’s time to get up for the day.

I know what you’re thinking “Okay Christine, this is great and all but how do I fix it?!”

Early mornings can be a complex issue. I’ve now gone through five of the many reasons why you and your baby might be up before the newspaper hits your doorstep.

Feel free to send me a message and we can work together on how to fix these early mornings.

What if your child is generally a good sleeper, sleeps independently, gets an appropriate amount of sleep but is still waking up early? Then here is my biggest tip:

Let her be.

Did you hear that? Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Let her be until 6:00 am (or later) in the crib by herself.

Once 6:00 am chimes, go ahead and go into her room, say Good Morning and start your day.

There you have it! Is your baby an early riser? Do you need some help getting to the root cause and establishing a sleep plan? Sign up here to get my tips and tricks right to your inbox.