HELP!! My 5 month old won't sleep past 5am! He goes to bed between 20:00 - 21:00 but is always up at 5 and won't go down again. 😓 I've tried putting him to bed sooner but he just wakes up after an hour and then won't go down for another 2 hours.. we have an eat, play, sleep cycle but he's usually ready for a nap around 2/2.5 hours later which can last anything between 30 mins to two hours which means he can have upto 4 naps in the day. He's always been a good sleeper and does sleep from 9 until 5 in one go. If he wakes before 5 he usually goes back down for a couple of hours! I'm desperate for him to sleep past 5 and know he probably naps too much but not really sure how to stop him from napping so much because he's so restless and upset if I try to keep him up. Any advice would be hugely appreciated! Thank you x
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Yes, that's early - I feel for you. The only things I can think of are:
- reducing nap sleep as you've already suggested (although this can sometimes backfire
)
- 'wake to sleep', which is waking him around an hour or so before he usually wakes up in the hope he resets his sleep cycle and then sleeps for longer. The key to this is to wake him up only enough so he's still very sleepy and goes back to sleep quickly (this can also backfire...)
- Absolutely not properly getting him up until a reasonable time. DS went through a period of waking super early as an older baby and I was quite persistent with staying in the dark with him and encouraging him to go back to sleep (even though it was mostly futile!). His early waking did sort itself out - no idea if it was related to doing this but it can't have harmed.
Good luck!
Lots of good ideas above, none of which worked on my dc 
. The best i got was maybe another half hour of them playing in the cot by rotating kick board type amd other toys.
Nowadays they often ned waking for school, but dh alarm goes off at 5am, so not much has changed sleepwise!
He has a dummy but doesn't go back off with it. I might try 'Wake to Sleep' but it seems like a big gamble 
.
MrsBriteSide do you feed your little one when she wakes or just let her do her own thing?
@MrsBriteSide okay something to bear in mind then! As soon as I hear him up I rush in with a bottle which may be why he is always up because he expects it . He was up at 4:05 this morning had a bottle and went back off until half 7 which was just what I needed (although I did end up setting up camp in his room as his cough kept making him lose his dummy!) Will definitely look into some cot toys and maybe a night light
@crazycatlady5 hoping it's just a phase! He's always been a long sleeper even from newborn when he was breastfed but it's been recently that he won't go back down for his second stretch of sleep which use to be between 3 - 5 hours long!
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