My 18 month daughter eats three good meals a day so why is she waking early?
My daughter is 18 months old, and an only child, at birth she weighed 9lb 9ozs and now weighs 26.4lbs. She eats 3 good meals a day:
Breakfast – Rice Krispies (4 tablespoons) and milk, 3-4 pieces of dried fruit and 1 slice of toast
Morning snack – toast or biscuit and fruit
Lunch – 5-6 tablespoons of homemade food, any meat fish and vegetables, plus a pudding of yoghurt/fruit
Snack – biscuit
Tea – as for lunch
Mary still has 3 x 6oz milk feeds every day, and is allergic to dairy, wheat, gluten, eggs and nuts. I work full-time, she goes to a childminder, the same one since she was 12 weeks old. Mary has 1-2 hours of sleep at 12.30pm; she goes to bed at 7pm following a milk feed and a bath by myself or my partner; she settles herself without any difficulty, wherever we are.
My problem is that for the last 2-3 weeks Mary has been waking up to 3 times a night and always waking at 5-5.30 am, whereas she would sleep all night until approximately 7am. Occasionally she wants a drink, sometimes just a cuddle, in fact I’m not sure what she wants at times.
Help
As your daughter is not really distressed when waking, nor does she appear hungry I would begin to look at the structure of her day. Moving her daytime sleep to nearer 1pm may help. Toddlers of this age begin to cut down their daytime sleep so let her sleep no longer than 1.5 hrs, yet the time that she wakes is still the same as before.
Toddlers need a lot of physical activity especially as they become competent walkers. Give her plenty of fresh air in the afternoon with the freedom to walk and run rather than spending time in a pram.
Reassure her when she wakes, but remain business-like and tell her “Mummy and Daddy are sleeping, dolly is sleeping, it’s night-time, time to sleep. See you in the morning”. If you keep your interaction to the minimum this problem should not escalate into something more serious. As she uses more energy by day her sleeping patterns should return to what they were.