Baby waking so early

[MummyM33]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can offer me some advice or a suggestion to help. My baby is now 10 months old, I cut out night bottles a couple of months ago. He has his dinner about 5 followed by a bowl of porridge (a friend suggested this to keep him full through the night and it worked amazing). He has a bottle at 6.30pm and goes to sleep. He was doing great and sleeping through until about 6 but this all changed a few weeks ago for no reason. He is now always wide awake by 5, usually even earlier. Today he was up at 3.15 :(
Does anyone have any ideas of how I can get him to sleep longer? I've tried both earlier and later bedtimes but they haven't worked. I'm due to return to work soon and so worried as won't be able to function if I'm up from 3/4am, thanks x

Persevere with a later bedtime.

A 630 bedtime is quite early so what time are you expecting the baby to wake?

I don't know, this is my first so I'm just following advice from others. That's the time most of the babies at our playgroup go to bed and sleep to about 6. What time would you suggest at this age?

It's not unreasonable to expect a child to sleep for around 12hrs at that age and it sounds like it was working well. What do you do when he wakes at 3:15? I would be treating it like it's the middle of the night and trying to settle him back to sleep. Is he indicating hunger or just wide awake? Is he napping too much in the day?

@blackcat86 thanks for your reply, he has 2 naps in the day and I did wonder if I should cut this down to 1, it's so hard though as because he's waking so early he's so tired, a catch 22! It's like he's hungry as I struggle to keep him happy until 6 when he has his breakfast, I did consider reintroducing a bottle to get him back to sleep as I know that would work but would feel like we're taking a step backwards. I've tried shhing and patting on his back but as soon as I stop he screams and stands up so I'm ending up getting up with him.

Thinking about it, it was when the clocks went back his sleep went poor and it's never recovered

I wouldn't see giving a bottle during the night as a step back, sleep habits change, get better and worse, and better again, just do what you need to do to settle them. My 12 month old has just had an unsettled couple of weeks and I don't know why. The only thing that would settle him again was a bottle, and we've not had night time bottles for months. That seems to have stopped again now.

It might be worth a try going back to an extra bottle. DD (15 weeks) sleeps well (She has a bottle at 10/11pm but is much younger) and generally sleeps until morning but sometimes she'll wake because she's having a growth spurt etc and is more hungry than usual. I would also look at the room temp now it's colder. Apparently 3am is the coldest part of the night do infant's sleep lighter so they can alert mum if they're cold. Even when it was within recommended ranges DD would cry out in her sleep until we made the room towards the warmer end.

I’d give a bottle when he wakes at 3/4/5am etc. I know it’s not ideal, but these things aren’t linear and they go through various phases.

My DS rarely did this and I was more strict about his routine and would rock back to sleep or whatever, but my DD is 13m and I’ll still give her a bottle if she wakes too early and it does put her back to sleep and is much quicker for me, meaning I can get back to bed faster! She hasn’t become dependent on them.

At 10 months I assume he’s having a morning bottle, so anything after 5am I just counted as his morning feed and before that as a night feed. Usually I just did a small amount like 4oz or often just water worked too.