5am wake ups help please!

[blinkyfink]

As the title suggests, we're stuck in a cycle of 5 AM a.m. wake ups. I little boy is 12 months old and goes to bed at 6:30 PM. He sleeps through till 5 AM but is then wakes up crying as is unable to go back to sleep. I get the impression that he needs more sleep though because he crus and within an hour of being up he could nap again. We've tried leaving him to see if he goes back off but he rarely does. We've also tried to put him to bed later (although not consistently) but he always seems overtired, and sleeps worse.

He naps for around 45 minutes from 9ish (if I can get hi to last that long) and then for 1.5 / 2 hours at around 1pm.

I'm pregnant again with awful morning sickness and this is doing me in right now! Any help would be very appreciated!

Sorry for the horrific spelling mistakes! Typing clumsily on phone.

Might be time to drop the am nap. If you can push him to bed later by 15-20 mins per night until he goes at 7.30 then you might be able to give dropping the nap a go. I found avoiding buggy or car was key I the morning and he may bed to have a v early lunch and slightly longer lunchtime nap (so 2.5 hrs) for a bit. Worth a try?

It sounds like what my ds did, it's shortlived and he will stretch eventually, cold comfort I know. I always took mine out in the morning, to softplay or a toddler group which kept him awake and then he had mid morning nap, usually 11-1, I think an early morning nap can perpetuate the problem!

Hmm I would suggest pushing back his morning nap and shortening it. He will probably be dropping it in the next month or two and it sounds as though he doesn't really need it hence the early waking. It is painful to gwt rid of it but push back by ten minutes every few days and always wake up at 10am.

Thank you all! It was 4am this morning. we've just put him down for his morning nap, 20 minutes later than usual and we'll get him up in 30 minutes.

I'm guessing we just have to be consistent with this? What do you recommend doing when he wakes in the morning? Leaving him until a reasonable hour (he's not screaming, just grumbling with a bit of crying).

DS was waking super early for a bit a few months ago and he wouldn't settle again.

I started taking him into bed in the spare room with me, rubbing his back and eventually he'd drift back off. Is this an option for you?
He's started going a bit later now , about 6.30 is average.

Try adding an extra layer of bedtime clothing. Simple advice, but has always worked for us

My ds is 22 months and has been waking around 5am for over a year . I've had threads on it in the past and the advice was to drop the morn nap (when he was still having one) but it made not a jot of difference in our case unfortunately. That being said, it tends to be the advice most often given so I'm guessing it works for most dc!

If the early waking persists then the best advice I got is to just make your peace with it and go with the flow. It's a hard habit to break, we've tried everything, so now I've just stopped worrying about it. I am exhausted though!

Given the clocks have just gone back things may be worse this week so don't worry overmuch if that happens - it takes my ds a week at least for his body clock to readjust. We also had 4am this morning!

With regards to dropping the early nap I went about it slightly differently - pushed it back by about 15-30 mins every week or so until he was napping 10-12 every day. He then wouldn't need a second nap so I brought bedtime forward to 6pm. As his one nap got later over the months (it's now 12-2) I also adjusted bedtime later if that makes sense - so bedtime is now 7pm- ie over the last 10 months or so he's slowly got to the more traditional toddler nap and bedtime schedule. You'll get a sense of how much awake time he can handle as you adjust his routine., some children will still have a second nap when the morn nap is later but ds didn't want the afternoon nap once we pushed the morn nap.