Hi everyone. I've been lurking in Sleep for some time now but never posted. DS is 8.5 months old and after a difficult few months of reflux and regular wakings he is now sleeping through 7pm to 5am which is fantastic. Initially he would go back to sleep with a breast feed and co-sleep but now he wants to get up at 5am. Having looked at previous threads I have worked on his naps making sure he doesn't nap before 9am and only letting him nap for 45mins in the morning, and then another nap at 12.30/1pm for 1.5- 2 hours. Having been an awful napper he has taken to this schedule pretty well. However it has made no change to his early waking. He usually goes to bed at 7, i brought this forward to 6:40 and he woke even earlier! I'm reluctant to do a later bedtime as the couple of times he has gone to bed later it has made no difference to how late he sleeps. We went back to 7pm bedtime but the last couple of nights his morning wake up is getting earlier. This morning he was awake at 4:20am. Today I tried a bottle of formula instead of breast feed- no change.
He is big for his age, eating well and having formula through the day apart from his early morning breast feed. We have black out blinds, have tried to do control cry in the morning with 5 mins intervals but he just escalates, he won't just play in his cot and co-sleeping no longer works. He is crawling and pulling up. To be honest I think he needs to sleep longer as he is pretty cranky by 6ish. Any ideas how of what else we can try (even it just stops this getting earlier and earlier)
Thank you