Anything I can adjust to make her sleep past 5am

[Jupitertomars]

DD, 11 months, has been waking for the day at 5/5.30am for a while. She will sometimes sleep longer if she has a bottle around 2am but most of the time still wakes at 5-5.30am.

Our routine is:

5-5.30: awake
8.30-9: nap for 1-1.5 hours
12-1: nap for 2-2.5 hours
7-7.30: bedtime

I am happy to get up at 5 if I know theres nothing I can do to influence her to sleep longer so just thought id ask.

About 60-70% of the time she will wake for a feed, otherwise she'll sleep until 5 or 5.30am then be wide awake. What is interesting is that if she wakes at 4.30am she will treat this as a night feed and go back to sleep for an hour or so after her bottle.

Is she getting enough sleep as well?

Thanks.

[Samsara123]

Don't flame me, I think she's sleeping well. Maybe going to bed an hour later at nighttime. Can you have a nap in the daytime when she is?

[Whatshallichoose]

I think recommended daytime sleep for her age is 2 - 2.5 hours. Would she sleep later if she had less daytime sleep?

[Timetogrowup2016]

She's getting loads of sleep.
At 11 months dd was doing 7-7 but she was only napping

9:30-10
And 2-2:30

So 2 times 30 minutes

[FATEdestiny]

I'd suggest a later bedtime and/or temporary dreamfeed Jupitertomars

The dreamfeed is to check if this is hunger/thirst related. It is not meant as a long term change, just 2 or 3 weeks to establish consistantly. The idea is you wake>feed>resettle when you go to bed, say 11pm. Properly wake baby up too, so that might involve a nappy change to be sure of a full feed being taken.

It might take into the second week of doing this before you start seeing a change in routine, but if the early morning wake up is hunger/thirst related then the dreamfeed should make it later so can adjust daytime diet accordingly. If it makes no difference to wake up in 2 or 3 weeks then you know she isn't waking for that reason.

The other change is longer term. 10h overnight sleep is reasonable for your child, so bedtime might want moving to 8-8.30pm. You don't change bedtime 'just like that' at this age, it usually involves moving the whole daytime routine later and dealing with a difficult transition period for several weeks.

So it would mean aiming fot naps starting at something like 9.30-10 and 1.30-2pm. This might be tricky early into the transition because you may be dealing with late bedtime and early mornings. So it needs a degree of flexibility within the aim.

I wouldn't cut daytime sleep. Sometimes daytime sleep needs to be moved and the timings out, but I generally work on the basis that sleep breeds sleep.

Another thing to mention would be blackouts, if not already fitted.

[jelliebelly]

Maybe she will always be an early riser! My dd is 8 and regularly gets up before 6am

[confusedandemployed]

I dropped the morning nap at 10 months and DD started to sleep through to 6.30-7...

[hmmmum]

Definitely drop one of the naps - she's currently using her morning nap to top up her night time sleep.
Best way to do it is wake her up after 30min for a couple days then shorten it to a 5min cat nap then after that try and keep her awake til the afternoon.
I have a boy prone to very early rises and the only thing that changes it is changing his naps
Good luck

[Cailleach666]

Sounds a great routine to me.

Is it a problem OP?

[Jupitertomars]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

I was going to go through each suggestion and try it one by one to see if it made any difference. So yesterday I cut her naps to 30 mins in the morning and 1.5 hours in the afternoon.

She slept from 7-6am. No wake up for milk either. Its the most ive slept in 11 months and I am so happy I posted this. Even if it doesnt last, having one night of solid sleep until 6am has left me feeling so rejuvenated!

[ButtMuncher]

I'd definitely drop or reduce the daytime sleep. I find it my 11.5 month old sleeps past an hour for both naps (combine total of 2) he either doesn't get off to sleep very well or wakes early.

Some people disagree with waking a sleeping baby but I do for daytime naps.

[Samsara123]

That't great OP, lets hope it keeps up!

[FATEdestiny]

That's fantastic Jupitertomars!

[Sweetpotatoaddict]

Glad you got more sleep, I'd been reading through about to suggest delaying the morning nap. Hurray it worked, mine slept till a decent time the other morning, I felt like I'd won the lottery

[LillyLoves]

I feel for you, the early wake ups are horrible! My son would frequently wake up for the day at 5am or earlier at that age too, he would sleep through until then, but his naps were much shorter :-(
He's now 18 months and down to one nap which is normally 2 hours, since he dropped his morning nap he wakes up at 6am on average. Still not great, but at least it feels like it is actually morning!
I hope you continue to have success with shortening the naps, well done! I never really tried anything because I was scared of making things worse!