8mo waking at 5am every morning to play...

[lovingpickles]

Title says it all really. Is there any way I can encourage him to go back to sleep once he has had his bottle?? I've tried giving him his dummy and putting him back in his cot, ssshing, rocking, leaving him to cry for a few mins...nothing works!

Unfortunately I'd say 5am is pretty standard for that age. Too keen to get up and start the day! Presumably he goes back to sleep by about 9am though for a nap?

in same boat with my 8month old but I would say 9am would be way too late for a nap! I have DD on the 2,3,4 routine- 2hours after waking back down for a nap, 3 hours to next nap, 4hours til bed.

Sometimes means her bedtime is 5.30pm but we survive just about!

Thanks for your replies (even if it's a bit depressing to hear that time is normal!). He used to sleep 7-7 with a dream feed at 11pm, but since we stopped the 11pm feed he's waking up at 5am and it's killing me! I'm going to have to start taking a nap to get through the long days...

I have to admit I kept the dream feed for alot longer for this very reason, it was only when he was about 16mo that I was able to drop it and keep the 12hours sleep. For me it was essential to my survival!

I seem to have the opposite problem. My DD (admittedly only 12wks) sleeps half the morning (intermittently) but is awake for several hours in the evening. Most nights now it's 1am or later that she goes to sleep.

My DS was similar to yours though. Up early every morning - he's now 2.5 and only in the last few months started sleeping later. But then he didn't sleep through the night until he his 2, and made up for it by having long naps. What I tended to do was sleep when he did, if I thought I could manage it, and make up the difference by being a little sedentary at times (and by drinking a lot of tea!)

It does get easier - weaning should start to help more when he is able to get into a wider range of food and start needing less in the way of milk. If dropping the late feed has prompted this, maybe he still needs the extra milk. I kept giving my DS almost the same amount of milk until he was really making strides with weaning. There's no reason for you to stop something if it isn't working for you. My DS still has a three hour nap in the middle of the day on occasion. (And other days no nap at all.) Every child is different after all.

My son normally wakes up for the day at 5.30, sometimes 5 sometimes nearer to 6. He is nearly 10 months and has woken at these times for months. No advice I'm afraid I think that that's just his wake up time.