Early rising is when your baby or toddler is waking and starting their day before 6am. It’s exhausting for all involved. I’ve been there!

When it comes to baby sleep, resolving early rising is one of the most challenging hurdles to overcome.

There are a number of factors that could be contributing to your baby’s early starts. So we need to start by ruling them out one at a time to work out what the culprit is.

Your baby will take their deepest chunk of sleep between 7pm and midnight. After midnight, their melatonin levels start to drop. By 4or 5am their melatonin levels have reduced significantly enough that any little discomfort may fool them into thinking it’s time to start their day (and yours!)

Here are some triggers that might be leading to this early rising;

• Early morning sunlight creeping in through the window – to fix this, my go to is aluminum foil on windows or Sleepy Sundays window film.

• Feeling too hot or cold (refer to my temperature guide for tips on ensuring you’re dressing your baby in the ideal layers for the current temperature)

• Noise – garbage trucks, cars driving past, birds chirping – this is where white noise all night can be helpful to muffle out sounds that might disturb your baby

• Hunger – If your baby is still having 2-3 feeds overnight, and has gone 3-4 hours since their last feed, they might be in genuine need of a feed. If your baby is hungry and 5.30am, feed them and resettle as you would any other overnight wake up.

• If you have an older baby or toddler, consider their intake during the day and consider if they might benefit from a snack before bed.

• Habit wake – this can be common and might require a few nights of resettling this wake up instead of getting your baby out of bed when they indicate they’re awake and ready before 6am. If you’re working on resettling overnight wake ups, you might want to consider treating the pre-6am wake up as thought it’s a midnight wake up. Either feed, resettle and pop back down to get them back to sleep to as close to 7am as possible. This can take up to 5 days to reset their body clock.

• Nap schedule being out of whack (too much or too little day sleep, or even taking naps at the wrong time of day can Interfere with early morning wake ups. Is it time to drop a nap? Is time to shorten a nap? Is it time to shift bedtime slightly?

Let me know how you go with trying to tackle these potential contributors!