Early waking = very early nap. WWYD??

[BotBotticelli]

DS1 is almost 7 months old and has started waking up at 0530 every morning. Sometimes a bit earlier.

He is wide awake and definitely thinks it is morning. So I leave him for a while to coo to himself and then get him up at around 0545. This is grim, but I guess pretty normal for a baby. Whether I put him to bed at 7.30pm or 6.30pm the same thing happens so I don't think it is related to his bedtime.

Anyway, the thing that's bothering me is that he is having a long nap (upto an hour) at around 8am, which just seems peverse to me! Obviously, he's very tired as he got up so early, and really needs this nap - he is really cranky by 0745 and self settles v easily.

Am I doing something wrong here??? Is it daft for him to be having such a long nap so early in the morning?? I have tried getting him back to sleep when he wakes at 5.30am (leaving him to self settle doesnt work, nor does rocking him - he just smiles, blows rapsberries and claws at my face), so I just can't see how I can do anything different.

Am I missing a trick??

[BotBotticelli]

Ps - meant to say, before this started, he was happily sleeping from around 7pm - 6.30am every night, and we have total blackout blinds in his room so it's not because of the light.

[Overreactionoftheweek]

My 20mnth DS is still in a very similar pattern and has been since he was tiny. We don't get him up until 6 but he might wake at 5.30 occasionally. He then naps at 9am for 2-3 hours and goes to bed at 5pm.

His nap is slowly getting later, might stay up til 10am now and go to bed at 6pm.

Every other child I know has their naps in the afternoon so it messes with my social life but is fine apart from that. I love having the evening to myself so am not going to mess with it.

I think people are just wired differently. But yeah, the 5 am wake ups aren't much fun!

[CarlyRose80]

My LO is up early 5.30-6am and normally goes back to sleep after school run at 9 although if really grumpy he will have a quick 20/30mins in his car seat in the living so we don't wake the rest of the house up. He is nearly 7 months.

[matilda101]

Apparently early waking can be helped by them having a later nap-my dd went through a phase of waking at about 6am and then needing a nap by 8-8.30am. I then put her nap back 5 minutes each morning until she wasn't napping until at least 9am. The theory is that if they have their nap too soon they are using it as an extension to their night sleep if that makes sense. This helped with my dd, she started sleeping until 7.30-8ish so it might help you out!

[Cnix]

I agree with matilda101. Also you could try making the morning nap the shorter nap of the day and try to encourage a longer nap after lunch time. Did the trick with my LO. :-)

[tobiasfunke]

We had this as well. Putting the nap back didn't really help as DS only took one nap of 20 minutes a day usually around 9am. Any later he got grumpy and just didn't bother with one and he ended up going to bed too early and then up even earlier.
It gradually got later and later as we put him to bed later but I wouldn't say he got up after 7am until he was well over 2.
I think you just have to adjust your clock to it we ended up going to bed at about 8.30. They grow out of it so it's only temporary though it doesn't feel it.