Early Morning Waking Strategies

Let’s talk about early morning wakings! You may be reading this blog post because…

• You just sleep trained your child and they’re waking up early, and we need to dig a little bit deeper into this..
• Your child falls asleep independently, but they’re waking up early…
• Your child has always woken up early, and what can we do about this?!

Here’s the checklist we go through with families:

#1: Check for light

To address early morning wakings, start by evaluating the darkness of your child’s room:

1. Step into the room: Sit down, close the door, and shut the blinds or curtains. Let your eyes acclimate for a few minutes.
2. Assess the room:
3. Can you see objects around you?
4. Can you clearly see the bed, artwork, or words on the wall?
5. If so, the room needs to be darker.
6. Ideal darkness: If you can’t see your hand in front of your face after adjusting, brilliant! You’ve created an ideal sleep environment.

Night Light Tips

For toddlers, a night light is fine, but it’s important to choose the right settings:

• Use your Hatch light dimly, set to the red spectrum. Red light is the least intrusive to sleep.
• Avoid blue or white light, as these are the most disruptive colors for sleep.

Watch Out for Sunshine

Even the tiniest crack of sunlight can make a big difference. Sunshine streaming into the room—even through closed eyelids—sends signals to your child’s brain that it’s time to wake up. Ensure the room is fully dark to prevent this early waking trigger.

#2: Check the expectations

You’ve ensured the room is completely pitch-black—great! Now, let’s consider what your child thinks will happen when they wake up at 5 or 6 AM.

• Are they expecting to get up and sit with you in a cozy chair to nurse in the semi-darkness?
• Do they anticipate being rocked, cuddling in your bed, or receiving a bottle right away?

Often, babies and toddlers wake early because they associate those morning hours (4-5 AM) with special attention, like snuggling in mom and dad’s bed, nursing, or having a bottle.

To address this, avoid offering instant gratification when they wake up early. Instead:

• Wait at least 10 minutes before starting a nursing or bottle session.
• Use this time to help your child learn that waking early doesn’t result in immediate engagement or rewards.

By setting clear expectations and creating a consistent morning routine, you can help shift their internal clock and encourage longer sleep stretches. When your child wakes up, try creating a consistent morning routine to gently space out the time between waking and their first feeding. Here’s an example:

1. Get your child out of the crib and start the day with a diaper change.
2. Get them dressed for the day.
3. Head downstairs together and involve them in small morning activities—have them “help” you make your coffee or prepare their bottle.
4. Sit down and enjoy breakfast together.

By getting creative with how you structure the morning, you can establish a routine that avoids an immediate feeding and helps set clearer expectations for the day. This gentle delay helps prevent early waking habits tied to instant gratification.

#3: Check the naps

The next step is to take a close look at your child’s nap schedule. It’s critical to determine if they’re getting too much daytime sleep or if it’s time to transition to a new nap schedule.

One common scenario we see is families saying, “My seven-month-old is waking up at 5 AM, but they’re still taking three naps a day. How can I help them sleep longer?” The answer often lies in consolidating naps and transitioning to a two-nap schedule.

When babies get too much daytime sleep, it can reduce their nighttime sleep—leading to early mornings. If this sounds familiar, it’s a good time to evaluate your child’s schedule and determine whether it’s time to make a nap transition. Consolidating naps can help balance their overall sleep and encourage longer stretches at night.

If your child is in one of these transitional age ranges—6-7 months, 12-14 months, or 2.5-3 years old—it’s time to evaluate their naps. Many nap transitions take place during these stages, and adjusting the schedule can have a big impact on solving early morning wakings.

Here’s what typically happens during these transitions:

• 6-7 months: Many babies are ready to transition from 3 naps to 2 naps.
• 12-14 months: This is the age range where most babies transition from 2 naps to 1 nap.
• 2.5-3 years old: Around this time, children often drop their nap entirely.

During these stages, it’s important to assess whether your child is getting too much daytime sleep. It may be time to:

• Cap naps to limit total daytime sleep.
• Transition to fewer naps.
• Drop naps altogether (for older toddlers).

This is a crucial piece of the puzzle when addressing early morning wakings. Balancing daytime sleep ensures your child is tired enough to sleep longer and more restfully at night.

#4: Check for Props

If your child is four months or older and relies on a sleep prop to fall asleep, this could be contributing to their early morning wakings.

Common sleep props include:

• Using a pacifier to fall asleep.
• Feeding to sleep.
• Rocking to sleep.
• Needing someone to lay with them until they fall asleep.

If your child is waking up at 5 or 6 AM looking for something—or someone—to help them go back to sleep, it’s a sign they’ve developed a dependency on that prop.

To encourage independent sleep and help solve early morning wakings, it’s time to re-evaluate those props and consider gradually removing them from your child’s routine. This adjustment can help your little one learn to self-soothe and connect their sleep cycles on their own.

#5: Check Bedtime

The last point we want to stress is that early morning wakings are very complicated. Alongside short naps, they are among the hardest sleep challenges to work through.

If you’ve tried all of the strategies—ensuring the room is super dark, adjusting awake times and nap lengths, evaluating early morning expectations, and addressing sleep props—it’s time to take a closer look at bedtime.

When evaluating bedtime, we’ll focus on two key aspects:

1. Bedtime timing: Is your child’s bedtime too early or too late?
2. Bedtime routine: Is your child’s bedtime routine consistent, calming, and conducive to restful sleep?

By assessing and adjusting both bedtime timing and the bedtime routine, you can take the next step toward resolving early morning wakings and helping your child get the restorative sleep they need.

Bedtime Routine

For children twelve months and under, it’s fine to include a bedtime bottle or nursing session as part of their routine. They can have a feed right before being placed in their crib.

However, for children over twelve months old, the bedtime feed should be removed. After this age, having a bedtime bottle or nursing session often interferes with successful nighttime sleep.

Here’s why:

• Milk contains natural sugars, which can lead to a "sugar crash" during the night, causing wake-ups.
• If your toddler or preschooler relaxes with a bottle or sippy cup of milk before bed, they may begin to associate that feeling with falling asleep. This can create a dependency, leading to early morning wakings as they search for the same comfort to return to sleep.

To clarify, there are exceptions—this approach doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. However, in most cases, removing the bedtime milk helps create more consistent and restorative sleep for toddlers and preschoolers.

If your toddler or preschooler is having a bottle or sippy cup of milk during their bedtime routine, it’s time to cut it out cold turkey.

Take a moment to evaluate the milk situation:

• Is your child waking up early and looking for milk to help them feel sleepy and get back to sleep during those early morning hours?
• If so, removing the bedtime milk could be the key to breaking this habit and promoting more consistent, restorative sleep.

This is a straightforward strategy you can implement immediately to support better sleep for your little one.

Timing of Bedtime

The next factor to consider is the timing of your child’s bedtime—the actual time they fall asleep. Many parents assume that putting their child to bed later will result in a later wake-up time, but this often backfires.

To achieve a fuller and better night of sleep, it’s crucial to put your child to bed at the appropriate hour. The goal is 11-12 hours of total sleep.

Why Later Bedtimes Backfire

For example, families often try an 8:00 PM bedtime hoping their child will sleep until 7:00 AM, but instead, the child wakes up at 6:00 or 6:15 AM—resulting in less overall sleep.

Adjust Bedtime Gradually

Here’s what to do:

1. Track their current bedtime and wake time.
2. If your child is going to bed at 7:00 PM and waking at 5:45 AM, try moving their bedtime 15 minutes earlier.
3. Make incremental changes.
4. Put them down at 6:45 PM for 4-5 nights and monitor their sleep.
5. If they start waking at 6:00 or 6:15 AM, they’re now getting more sleep—stay with this bedtime!
6. Continue adjusting if needed.
7. If there’s no improvement, move bedtime to 6:30 PM for 4-5 nights and track their wake times.
8. If that still doesn’t help, you have full permission to try as late as 7:15 PM to see if a slightly later bedtime improves their wake time.

Be Consistent

Each time you implement a new bedtime, give it 4-5 nights before making further changes. This allows enough time for your child to adjust and for you to track meaningful results.