Having mulled over the comments on the last post, I've reached some interesting conclusions. None of these ideas are exactly new. It seems like I've been waging one form of sleep battle or another since Botany was born, so I have given this a lot of thought already. But up until now, it was more like...partly-baked notions that I haven't bothered to finish formulating.
I think commenter Monica (hi Monica!) is absolutely right in several respects; firstly, that something probably needs to change, if only because I think things could be working better than the present situation. The trouble is that any change does require a certain amount of modification on both my part and Botany's. I do find it difficult to to be consistent, persistent and diligent when it involves both getting up early and getting out of the current comfort zone. However! Assuming that the nettle can be grasped, here's the other puzzle.
Forgive me in advance if what follows is all too "Behavioural Modification 101" but I'm trying to work it through in my own mind.
The second thing on which I think Monica is spot on about is that one of the reasons Botany wakes up so early is so that I will bring her into bed with me and nurse her. It's a basic behaviour-reward pattern. I don't think Botany is necessarily a lark by nature. Sure, occasionally, she gets up at the ungodly hour of 5.30 am, ready to party and and no matter what, will not be boobed back to sleep for the day. But what I observe, both from her willingness to nurse back down and from her nap patterns is that she actually does seem to require more sleep than a 5.30 am kick off allows. So really, the main reason she wakes up and calls for me is that she wants the company of Mummy's boobs. And by now, I reckon her body clock is actually primed to go off at that point- mine certainly is.
Now, the problem is of course how to fix all of this. Botany goes to bed by 7.30pm most nights and quite often sleeps straight through til 5.30ish. That's ten hours, which seems a reasonable amount of time. Under the present circumstances, I can't really shift her bedtime any later. I reckon that until I can establish with more certainty that she can, in fact, sleep on her own for longer than she presently does, then it seems a trifle unfair to pick a time beyond 5.30am and confine her to her cot until that time is reached. So rightly or wrongly, I've chosen 5.30am as the magic hour at which she should be able to get up if she really wants to. I know. Ugh.
I could of course implement a form of cry it out to see if it would induce later wake ups. To be honest, there are times when I do this anyway- for example, when she kicks off at 4am and I am thinking nooooo way. But my concern is this: at her age, Botany has no way of knowing what time it is. She has no means by which to realise that the magic wake-up hour is reached. So I think it gets extremely confusing for her if sometimes when she cries, Mummy comes in after, say 30 minutes and other times, it's 5 minutes. My guess is that it's created a form of unwanted intermittent reinforcement for an early morning wake up and cry. Because, hey, sometimes it might be the lucky day when all you need is a 3 minute wail!
What occurred to me is this: the problem may not be the reward. In fact, having such a reward to offer could potentially work in my favour. What I need to do is introduce an intermediate step between the current behaviour (wake up, cry like banshee) and reward (boob). In other words, I need to teach Botany that it's not her crying for a certain length of time that will make me magically appear at her cotside, but that my appearance is triggered or connected to something else. I think that "the something else" should provide a visual clue to help her learn that an appropriate wake-up time has been reached.
Commenter Kristin (hi Kristin!) had the excellent suggestion of using a digital clock- when the number reads 7, it's time to get up. However, I'd agree that even though she is a smart cookie, Botany may be too young for this just yet. I've seen these, which might be a possibility, although wea re not quite at the recommended 2 plus age range. Trouble is, I am not sure if Botany would really be able to see it very well from the current position of her cot, so I am not sure where I would put the damn thing (other than perhaps in the cot itself?) I might be able to re-configure things a bit in her room but I don't know how effective that would be.
What I might try (and please dear Internets, if you think this is completely dumb, tell me) is to put a timer on the small blue light on the bedside table. The little lamp casts a very low key and pleasant glow. Initially I would set it for 5am. If she wakes up before that, I could leave her to gurn until the appointed hour. Then the light would come on, followed by my immediately coming in to get her. My goal would be to keep shifting the "light-on" time later and later. My hope would be that this would teach her that Mummy only comes in when the light comes on.
Or would this simply result in her crying on and on in hopes that this somehow turns on the light? In which case, I am no further forward. I have this theory that it would take awhile but presumably there may be times when the light comes on even when she is not in cry mode. That may eventually clue in her that the light is not necessarily related to her wailing.
The other alternative is, of course, to do nothing other than what I am already doing, knowing that eventually she will grow out of it and that one day it will take my running a jackhammer by the side of her bed to rouse her. Ah, what a blissful notion.