Help! My Baby is Waking 30 Minutes After Bedtime
This is a very common occurrence that many parents face. Just when you think you can relax for a few hours after getting your little one down, they wake up after 20-30 minutes, generally crying. In the sleep industry, we refer to this as a “false start.”
A false start is a completely different waking than your regular nighttime wake up. They are caused by different factors and therefore require different solutions to correct. Nighttime wakings are obviously also common in babies, but they occur after your baby has been sleeping for at least an hour or so.
Nighttime wakings are usually a result of hunger or a baby’s inability to connect their sleep cycles. If your baby is 6 months or older and had a nice full feeding before going to sleep, hunger shouldn’t be the issue with a waking so soon. If your baby is unable to connect their sleep cycles, that is a different conversation altogether (and a great reason to consider working with a pediatric sleep consultant wink wink).
But a false start is an entirely different beast, and fortunately one that can generally be solved fairly easily. There are three usual suspects to look for when trying to eliminate a false start:
Discomfort - if your baby is uncomfortable, there is a good chance they won’t be able to sleep well. Just like you or me! Teething, gas, reflux, or even being uncomfortable with the temperature can cause them to wake after managing to put themselves to sleep. You can quickly find some fixes to the first three by talking to your pediatrician, and as for temperature I have a very handy dressing guide you can reference!
Lack of Sleep Pressure - there are two things that help us all fall asleep: 1) our circadian rhythm and 2) our sleep drive. Our circadian rhythm tells our brain to produce melatonin when it becomes dark and cortisol when it becomes light. Our sleep drive is simply the body’s natural urge to sleep as we spend time awake, wear ourselves out physically, heal from injuries or illness, or experience exciting or stressful events.
As babies are very quickly developing & growing in their first year of life, their sleep drive builds up much quicker than it does for you or me. This is partially why they require so much daytime sleep! But as they age, that sleep pressure accumulation begins to slow down and they need more and more wake time before going to sleep again, and then be able to remain asleep. If your baby takes a long time to fall asleep at bedtime and is mostly content and happy during this time, lack of sleep pressure could be the cause. It may be time to tweak their schedule and consider dropping a nap, capping a nap, or adding in additional wake time to allow for enough sleep pressure to be built up before bed.
Overtiredness - contrary to common sense, when a baby is overtired they have a very difficult time settling, falling asleep, and staying asleep. Being overtired results in a cortisol spike at the time we want it least and it can lead to your baby seeming energetic or wired, most definitely NOT easily drifting off to sleep. If this is the case, moving bedtime up by about 30 minutes could fix the false start.
And that’s what makes false starts a little tricky. We are dealing with very similar symptoms when a baby is not tired enough vs too tired. So how do you determine which scenario fits and how can you fix it? I also have a great wake time table I’m happy to share with you and you can always try to troubleshoot yourself based on all your newly acquired sleep knowledge from this post. (If you decide to troubleshoot it yourself, I strongly encourage to first move bedtime sooner as overtiredness can be a vicious cycle to break.)
Hopefully one of these solutions will eliminate those frustrating false starts and you can get back to enjoying some relaxing evening hours! But if the problem persists, it might be time to consider some 1:1 help from a pediatric sleep consultant like myself. :)
Sleep well!
