Early Morning Waking 8 month old

[ditzy5th]

First time posting...really want some advice!

My 8 month ok has been waking between 5-6am for the last 2 months or so. She is not waking for a feed, she stopped feeding at night when she was 5 months ish. She will babble etc and then start crying. On advice of hv, we try not to intervene but may 'check in' on her if the crying is severe (every 10mins)Since we have done this, she doesn't really cry full pelt but may just winge and moan. Sometimes she falls asleep and wakes a short while later. I am worried that this is now a habit. I leave her in her cot til al least 6.30.

She goes down at 8pm and settles quickly to sleep, sometimes she is asleep during last bf. I have tried all sorts and looked at her whole routine. Currently our routine is loosely this (Gina Ford)

5-6am waking
7am bf
8am breakfast
9.30/9.45 nap for 30 mins
11.30/11.45 lunch
12.30/12.45 nap for 1 and half to 2 hours
3.00 ish bf
4.45 nap for 15 mins
5.45 dinner
7.15 bath feed and bed for
8.00

I wondered whether I should go down to 2 naps but she wouldn't be able to last 5 hours before bed time. I pushed nap forward to 9.30 and keep it short on purpose as I don't want her to use it as an extension of her night sleep. But tbh she is pretty tired all the way to lunchtime as she can be up from 5.30am. She has only slept through till 7 a handful of times.

Tearing my hair out as dont know how to break this cycle of emw and it's been going on for a while! Would really appreciate some advice. x x

Same problems here. Was hoping for advice.

Bump! Can anyone help??

Same here, bumping for you (and me!). 9 month old wakes around 5am every morning after 8pm bedtime plus dreamfeed at 1030pm plus 2am feed. Goes back to sleep an hour later but I don't know how to help her not wake that early on the first place.

Sorry, have hijacked. Maybe I should do a separate post. And get no replies to that either haha! Maybe there is a different topic we should post in as could be that the sleep topic is visited mainly by people looking for answers as well?

Think 8mo sounds a bit old for 3 naps still, esp if your LO is having a nice long 90 min/2 hour nap in the afternoon....I agree if LO is awake between 5-6am then you will need a nap pretty early in the morning, 9am latest probably.

I would say try putting her down for a nap 3 hours after waking, and let her sleep as long as she likes. Even if she has an hour, that only takes you till 10am. Then try and keep her awake from 10am - 1pm...hopefully she will then sleep till almost 3pm. Then you can keep her awake from 3pm until bedtime....even if it means doing an early bedtime - i often bath DS at 6,15pm, do bottle at 6.40pm and he is asleep by 6,50pm.

IYSWIM? Maybe try stretching out the period of wakefulness inbetween her first and second nap....this means the afternoon will starts at 3pm and be much shorter/manageable for her.

Not sure if this helps, but my DS is 10mo and he has gone througha few random phases of waking up at 5am, which lasted a couple of weeks. Then he consistently did 6am for a month or so,and has just recently decided that wake-up time is 7am which is bliss. And which i never thought would happen! hang in there. sometimes its not something you need to fix.

Thanks for that... I have purposely stretched out her morning nap till at least 9.30 as I don't want it to encourage the emw. Maybe I will let her sleep in the morning, push the next nap on and try and get her down early. The only thing I'm really worried about is her waking an hour earlier!!

Good that your LO has just grown out of it... I'd like to think she will too but worry that I am destined for early starts for the next few years!!