Early wakes after the clock change

Some little ones roll with the clock change and it barely affects their sleep at all, for others it can mean the start of some very unwelcome early wakes. We’re taking a look at what you can do if those early wakes stick around!

What counts as an early wake?

11-12 hours of sleep is the goal, so anything less than that we’d say is an early wake. On a 7pm-7am schedule that would mean any wakes before 6am we’d count as ‘early’ and would work to improve if you wanted to.

 

What do I do when they wake early?

• If they wake but are happy in their cot/bed and are rolling around, chatting away to themselves then you don’t need to do anything. Leave them and you may be surprised to see after a while they go back down!
• If they wake and are upset and you need to respond, do! We’d recommend choosing a sleep coaching method that’s right for you and your family and using that very consistently until the clock hits an acceptable ‘get up’ time for you – typically after 6am. You can access a range of age-appropriate sleep coaching methods in our Newborn, Baby and Toddler courses.
• Try to keep your little one in their sleep space until your acceptable get up time. With some methods, this could mean you staying with them in their room until 6am or later, but this can help hugely with resetting their body clocks to learn that the day doesn’t start until after 6am.
• As much as you can, try not to ‘reinforce’ the early wake with things your little one may enjoy such as coming into your bed or putting the iPad on to buy yourself another 30 mins snoozing. So, SO tempting but it can very quickly become a reason TO wake early!

How long do early wakes take to improve?

Early wakes are one of the most common problems we see, but also (unfortunately!) one of the most stubborn to fix. It can take a few weeks of being really consistent with a response before things start to improve.

 

What if it doesn’t work?

If you’ve been really consistent for a few weeks and are still seeing early wakes, it could be that it’s more than just the clock change causing them. Typically we’d want to think about:

• Are they over or under tired? Do we need to tweak their daytime sleep?
• How are they getting to sleep? Are they able to independently self settle back to sleep in the early hours?
• Is there any discomfort disrupting sleep and causing the early wakes?

 

If you want some personalised help with early wakes, book a 1:1 consultation and we’ll give you a tailored plan to put into action. If you want to hear more about early wakes, Heidi recently recorded a podcast on the topic so go give it a listen!