22 mo waking up tired and grumpy

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DS is almost 2 and usually gets about 10hrs sleep at night (730-530am ish) and about 1.5/2 hrs nap during the day. Have come to accept that he's never going to be a 12hr a night baby...!

The last few weeks he's started waking up really early, often before 5am, and so over all his nighttime sleep has fallen to around 9hrs max.

Have tried lots of things, and sometimes he'll go back to sleep for another hr or so, so gets his 10hrs, but as often as not, he'll be up for the day.

If we manage to get him to sleep before 730pm - only the days he's not at nursery - he'll have a good 10 hrs, but when he's not falling asleep until closer to 8pm - on nursery days when hometime/bathtime/bedtime is a bit later - then he'll be awake about 9 hrs later.

Thing is he wakes up crying, tired and grumpy. He's inconsolable for about 30 mins, and then grumpy the rest of the morning.

The other day he miraculously slept almost 11 hrs straight and he was a different baby when he woke up - lay in bed with us laughing, cuddling, smiling, reading books.

I feel so bad for him - I know he's tired, but don't know how to get him to have more sleep. He has a blackout travel curtain AND blackout blinds in his room, so its not the light. He sometimes wakes saying he needs a poo, but then he doesn't actually do one for hours later. He has a bad cold at the moment so is snotty and blocked up when he wakes, so make that's what's making him miserable, but the early waking pre-dates this so it's been accumulating for weeks really.

If he's tired, why doesn't he just sleep longer? :(

I feel your pain! When dd started doing this about the same age the one thing that worked was bringing her into bed with us and feeding her - she'd usually go back to sleep as long as everything was kept quiet and dark. We also use a detuned radio for white noise for all sleep/naps.

My DD was the same until we cut her nap time to 1 hour and moved it forward so she was up by 1.30pm latest. Then she was ready for bed at 7pm and slept til 6. Still an early wake up call but at least she was getting 11 hours straight - all our dark circles disappeared!!

My DD is 20 months and we have moved her nap earlier so she is up no later than two. She is then ready for bed at 7 and up just after 6. She needs a nap but if she wakes up too late in the day then she faffs around at bedtime and gets less sleep.

My 20mo is much the same! I give him milk and a little snack as soon as he wakes up which helps with the grumps. On Sunday he ended up having his nap 11-1 rather than 12-2 then was asleep by 6.15 rather than the usual 7 - he still woke up at his usual 5.30 but had had an extra hour sleep....could you shift his routine a bit and try an earlier bedtime? Will be watching this thread for ideas though! We had 2 glorious weeks of 7-7ish a little while ago but it's not happened since!

thanks all - I've thought for a while that he would prefer his nap earlier, as he gets very yawn-y around mid-morning. At nursery he tends to nap 12-130pm ish, but at home we often don't get him down til 1 ish then he often sleeps til 3pm ish. It takes a bit longer to get him down as I think he's over tired by 1pm. Then like someone else said, he faffs a bit at bedtime and doesn't drop off til 8pm, sometimes after.

We're going on a 3 weeks holiday next week so going to experiment with a 11am ish nap time, maybe after a mid-morning biggish snack, rather than actual lunch, and see what happens then.

Having said that, the last few days, now that his cold has cleared up, he's been sleeping 8pm - 630am!!! He's a DIFFERENT BOY when he wakes up!! And I'm a different mummy ;))