An exhausted mum has revealed how she stopped her baby daughter waking up so early each morning thanks to a simple trick involving a household item.
The 31-year-old from Northern Ireland had reached her wits' end with her daughter's daily 4.30-5am wake-up call.
She tried absolutely everything to try and make her 10-month old sleep past 5am but couldn't figure out what was the issue.
"I was losing my mind trying to figure out what was waking her up every morning," she told Belfast Live .
"I thought it was hunger but she wasn't ever overly fussed on her bottle when she did wake up.
"For ages I kept saying to myself it was a bad bout of teething, but she was fine when she did get up just cranky sometimes because I could tell she was still tired but just couldn't get back to sleep when she did wake.
"I tried everything but nothing seemed to work and I had resigned myself to the fact she would forever wake before 5am."
The mum said it wasn't until she was chatting to a friend that she realised what might be the issue.
The pal asked if her daughter's room was completely dark as babies sleep better with complete darkness due to melatonin - the sleepy hormone that darkness helps release.
She added: "We had blackout curtains in her nursery but I did notice one morning when I went in, there was still light getting in through the top - above the curtain and when I thought about it, the room was a lot brighter than I'd expected.
"I didn't really want to spend a fortune on new blinds and curtains in case they made absolutely no difference to her sleep so I decided to think outside the box and look for an alternative, and there it was right in my cupboard."
The first-time mum said she decided to use black bin liners on the window to try and make the room darker and to her amazement it worked.
She added: "I put the bin liners up over the edges of the nursery room window where the light was getting in, I didn't even care what the neighbours must have thought as I was desperate to get more sleep.
"I couldn't believe it, the first night she slept until 8am, she had never done that before. I thought it might have been a fluke but she's sleeping to at least 7.30am every morning now, it's amazing."
