Just want your opinion!

My twins (boy girl) are going to be 6 months old on the first of December. They only get up once a night for a full bottle. But what I want your opinions on is my girl. She is small! Ever since the time change (GRRRR!) she likes to wake up at 5 am and thinks it is time to get up. What has been working is that we put her into a swing and she goes back to sleep for at least another hour. I know this won't work forever and it is something we need to get off of but would you start now or just wait until she doesn't fit in it anymore?? She does take pretty good naps and sleeps pretty well during the night and doesn't always wake up at this time. I would say it is about 4 times a week so majority of it.

So 2 questions:

1. Would you keep on using the swing when needed to get the extra time sleeping until she out grows it despite the chance of her obtaining a bad habit that has to be broken later? (I only use the swing for this)
2. What would you do to get her to sleep a little bit longer? CIO? (which isn't easy in our house during the wee hours but I will do it!)

I have been working hard on getting them use to the time change and well they just won't budge at all. So I pretty much have just adjusted to it. Getting up at 6 am is not that bad but I refuse to get up at 5 am!

P.S. I also have a almost 3 year old (January) so getting that 1 extra hour is very crucial!!!!!!!

 

How long has she been waking up at 5? I can't remember when the time change was...lol. If my girls wake up this early I usually let them fuss for no longer than an hour, if they are still up it's time to get up. I would say after about 30 minutes they almost always fall back asleep.

 

I'm not a great one to give advice considering my boys have gotten up at 5 am since...well..they were born. I'm thrilled if I get to sleep until 5:45. I would probably wean her off the swing though soon as the longer you wait the harder it will be. I tried to do CIO in the mornings, but it didn't work for us. It's worth a shot though!

 

If the swing is working for now I'd keep using it. Why mess with something that's working?

 

I'm with Aimee....why mess with a sleeping baby? LOL But then, as years go by I realize that some things are just more important - sleep being one of them. Likely by the time she grows out of the swing she'll have a 'new' bad habit that will take precedence. I know my son napped in his swing for MONTHS and he is now one of my best night time sleepers and was an awesome napper in his crib once he hit that 9mth mark or so...

 

Are you feeding her right away? She is old enough that I would only go to her if she is full out crying and won't go back to sleep, I would then calm her down and leave her in her crib until it is time to get up. Also, hold off feeding until the time you want her to get up. If you feed her at 5am, she is going to wake at 5am continually. It sucks and most likely will take time but eventually she will get the hint that things start later.

 

My opinion is that it really sucks when our babies wake up at 5 am too! LOL I was just commenting to my husband this morning, after one baby woke up at 5:00am and his brother woke up at 5:15am, that this time change is killing me! We were wondering how we could get them to sleep 1 hour later. And I WISH we could just plop our boys in a swing and they dose back off for an hour. But for some reason our babies never cared all that much for swings, and if they swing for longer than 5 minutes or so they seem to start getting agitated by the motion, and they never last more than 10 minutes in a swing (with or without it swinging). That's a shame too because we have the Fisher Price Papasan Cradle Swing (which was NOT cheap) and two battery powered Fisher Price Rainforest swings. You can barely move through our dining room and living room!

Marchl you make a good point about trying not to feed them as soon as they wake up, and that is exactly what we have been doing. In the morning I will try and hold them off, but I don't know if I'll be able to hold them off for long. I don't want to do CIO it just yet, but at some point down the road we will put that option on the table for sure.