Baby waking up at 4/5 am every morning

[Babymay2024]

My little one is 8 months old and wake up between 4-5am each morning. How can I make this later even if it’s until 6am.

He currently goes to bed at 6.30pm, with 2 naps during the day lasting about an hour and half each. He also is still waking for two feeds at night.

I’ve tried making his bed time later and it makes no difference.

any tips would be appreciated.

Is he cold? 4/5am is generally the coldest part of the night

I don’t think so, his baby monitor consistently says it’s either 21/22 degrees in his room. We also keep the heating on a setting if it drops below a certain temperature it kicks in to avoid him getting cold.

I’m not sure, mine have both done this at different stages. My 12 month old currently wows at 5am. Not sure there’s much you can do until they go on to the next phase.

Appreciate sleep training is a very controversial topic, but from 7-9 months my DS was waking up 1-2 times a night and then waking up for good at 5am every day, and at 9 months we decided to sleep train him. We knew he wasn't feeding from hunger, and he had previously slept with one wake up and waking up at 7am. We did CIO, and first night he cried for 15 minutes the two times he woke up (which was our limit before going in), second night he cried for 10 mins and within 3 nights he was babbling to himself when he woke up, and is now sleeping until 6.30. He does sometimes wake at 5ish but will roll around, babble and then go back to sleep.

We really wish we had sleep trained earlier, as it was clear we had become a crutch to help him sleep but appreciate it's not for everyone!

For mine, 6.30pm would have been a very early sleep time. They did better with 7.30/8pm.
Up for the day at 7am or so.
Having said this, they'd wake many times a night, so it's not like we had sleeping cracked!

I know you say the earlier bedtime doesn't help but that is very early. Can you get it to at least 7pm by putting him down 10 minutes later for a few nights then another 10 minutes early for a few more nights?

If I remember rightly the No Cry Sleep Solution has tips on early waking.

At that age mine went to bed at 5:30/6 and was up once in the night for a bottle then was up at 5 for the day. With 2 30 min naps in the day. He's now 2.3 and sleeping through but still wakes at 5/5:30 latest😅

That's a very normal overnight sleep stretch. I expect you need to move bedtime later.

It's inconvenient, but 12 hours of sleep overnight is really rare. Ignore the self professed sleep experts who suggest otherwise.

Try pushing bedtime back in 15 minute increments to 7.30pm, and I expect you'll start to see a difference.

With our DD, we cannot get her down before 8pm, but she'll happily sleep until 7am.

He’s sleeping a normal amount. Say he is averaging a wake up time at 4:30am. That’s 10 hours at night. Add on 3 hours of naps and you’re at 13 hours uninterrupted sleep - right in the middle of normal time wise.

You either need to make bedtime later for at least 2 weeks, or cut down on naps I’m afraid!