Another early riser

[spacepoodle]

From looking at the sleep board this seems to be a common problem at the moment!

DS is 8.5 months old. He's been a pretty good sleeper at night, going 11-12 hours with no night feeds from 4 months old. For the past week or so he's been waking at 5ish. I'm aware this could be linked to the huge amount of development happening at this stage but my question is how best to handle it?

We had got into quite a nice routine of :

6:30/7am Wake
9-10am Nap
1-3pm Nap
or 12:30-1:30 nap and 3:30-4pm nap
6:30/7pm - Bed


Since waking early he tends to want a huge morning nap (sometimes 2.5 hours!) and either two short afternoon naps or another huge one at 1pm.

Do I encourage the long naps through this developmental stage or should I try to limit them to encourage him to go back to sleeping longer at night? I don't want to end up with a routine where a 5am wake up is normal!

His natural wake up time seems to be 6:30-7:30 so if anyone can suggest how we can aim to get back to that it would be great.

[spacepoodle]

I should add this is what we did yesterday:

5:30 wake
Leave in cot until 6:30 (he is happy chatting/crawling about)
8:30 nap (with some screaming before!)
10:00 I woke him up
12:50-3:00 Nap
6:30 Bed, asleep at 6:40

He woke at 5:30 this morning.

Is it reasonable to expect to be able to push his naps back by 10 minutes a day until we get back to a 9-10, 1-3 and 7-7 schedule or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[FATEdestiny]

Rather than 10 minute pushes, I would just organise 3 or 4 busy days and shift the routine in one fell swoop.

An early morning nap is a problem. I would do 9am, so have something active planned to do first thing in the morning to keep him going.

I'd also suggest that you set a bedtime assuming an 11h night, letting the flexibility come from an hour longer in the morning, rather than bedtime an hour earlier.

So if a 6am wake up is ok, go for an 7pm bedtime and allow for sometimes having a 6.30am wake, sometimes 6.15am or 6.45am, maybe even up to 7am. Likewise if you are aiming for a wake up time with 7-something AM, then an 8pm bedtime would be better.

Nap length - depends on your child. Mine was have two 2h naps (9-11 and 1-3, with a 8pm-7am night) at this age. I would wake from the morning nap at a set 11am, this allowed for the afternoon nap to be at a routines time too. I would suspect a 9-11 and 2-4 would be better for her, but I had a 3pm school run to fit in.

[spacepoodle]

Thanks FATE, that's really helpful.

We managed to get until 8:30 this morning before his morning nap. He was so tired. He woke up at 10 and is already rubbing his eyes! We're going to have to power through. DH is taking him swimming soon which should tire him out. Will aim for a 9am nap tomorrow.

I'm worried about him getting overtired and therefore sleeping even less at night. In your experience would he just make up for lost sleep at night at this age?

[FATEdestiny]

Keeping wake before the first nap of the day won't cause over tiredness. This is always the easiest nap of the day, so any catching up needed will be done in the daytime naps.

[spacepoodle]

Well the plan failed! He fell asleep on the way to swimming (around 12) for about 20 minutes. He had a proper nap 3-4pm and has just gone to sleep for the night now. Let's see what tomorrow morning brings...

Thanks so much for your advice, FATE. You should start charging