Early wakes with 8 month old - HELP !

[Busybird123]

Hey everyone, a few weeks back my DS went to bed at 8pm slept through to 6am - somehow changed , as he went through teething and some regression / spurt I believe, now he goes to bed at 7pm and wakes at 4.30 / 5am ... When he wakes he will not go back to sleep - he stays up until about 7ish .. then naps for about an hour, then wake until about 11 ish and has a good long nap , maybe wake again by 12.30 / 1 pm , but sometimes this can be longer - maybe 1.30 .. then by the time 4.30 comes he is bate, so he may nap again for (I try for like 15 mins ) to keep him awake but he is wrecked again by 7pm so quite challenging to keep him awake , we have blackout curtains and blinds, he is on 2 - 3 meals a day and plenty of milk --- WHAT am I doing wrong , any tips greatly appreciated, I do know maybe shifting the nap times may help but because he wakes so early the nap times are challenging !!

The room needs to be super dark. I have blackout blinds and also put tinfoil around the edges so no light can peak through. It's helped us tremendously.

Keep him awake for a bit longer in the morning so that his big nap is earlier in the day. Then aim for a 30-45 minutes nap around 3-4pm.

Probably not what you want to hear but it sounds normal to me, my 8mo has exactly the same timings with naps etc but goes to bed at 6.30 usually. I'm sure it'll all change again in a month or two! Their sleep patterns are so variable at this age I've never bothered trying to force anything.

Thank you , so you're suggesting 2 naps ?

Thank you 6.30,wow and what time do they wake , you're right most likely it'll pass but zzzzzz !!!!

Yeah they should be on 2 naps at this age. Mine transitioned to 2 naps around 6.5 months.

@Busybird123 he wakes up between 5 and 6:30 usually - he does stay down longer when it's darker though! I think they are generally moving towards two naps at this age but we're so out of routine with the summer holidays etc that we don't have much consistency and he's just sleeping when he can. The first morning nap is gradually getting later so the two morning naps will merge together and then you can try to push through to bedtime after the afternoon nap. I don't believe in being too rigid about it!