Views on bedtime for a 9mo to wake up at 0630/0700

[Latinatta]

Interested to know what time people put their 9/10mo babies to sleep.

Since working with a very good sleep consultant for a few weeks (£££ but worth it for us) DD normally sleeps 11 hours straight which is a million times better than previously waking up to 8 times and feeding to sleep. But has begun to wake at 0530 in the last few weeks- she is pooped and falls asleep at 1830 with no help and several days of trying 1845 put downs to gradually get bedtime later give me the same wake up time.

I feel supremely grateful for her sleep and presume that her default is 11 hours and if I want a 0630 wakeup I need to push bedtime later but not quite sure what I'm missing as doing it in 15 minute increments doesn't seem to help and the odd late bedtime gives the same 0530 wakeup too.

DD naps 40-60 mins in the morning and lunchtime nap of around 2 hours.

Grateful for any thoughts!

11h over night sleep is normal for your average child at this age. The range of normal would be 10-12h.

I would go for a 7.30pm start of bedtime routine, asleep by 8pm at the latest, for a 6.30-7am wake up.

But you can't just change bedtime, just like that. It won't work, because baby will be exhausted and over tired.

You may need to make a temporary change to daytime sleep routine, in order to effect that change. That might either mean having longer naps at different times, if you were previously waking from naps and limiting nap lengths. Or it might involve making naps earlier do so that you can add in a third nap. These changes are not perminant, just to allow for moving bedtime. Then give it a week or two to establish and move back to the routine you have, just with a different bed time.

Some possible examples (there are loads of other options):

Wake 5.30am
2h30m awake time
Nap 8am, leave to sleep as long as possible. Say 90m, waking at 9.30am
2h 30m awake time
11.30am nap for as long as possible. Say 2h until 1.30pm
2h30m awake time
4pm power Nap. Wake up at 4.45pm
3h-3h30m awake time
7.30-8pm bedtime

Or

5.30am wake
2h awake time
7.30 nap as long as possible. But say thing nap is only 45m until 8.15am
2h awake time
10.15am nap as long as possible. Say until 12.15pm
3h awake time
3.15pm waking up after 45m
4h awake time
8pm bedtime

Or

5.30 wake
2h awake time
7.30-8.30
3h awake time
11.30-1.30 nap
3h awake time
4.30-5.30 nap
3h awake time
8.30pm bedtime

Or

5.30am wake
3h awake time
8.30-9.30 nap
3h30m awake time
1.30 - 3.30 nap
4h awake time
7.30pm bed

There's loads of other ways to do it. The idea is that by allowing extra daytime sleep and timing naps differently, baby can go to bed later without being exhausted.

Our 9 month old goes to bed at 8pm. She wakes at 7am. Naps again at 9.30-11.30am. Then has a nap somewhere around 2.30-4pm

We stretched outs later if he days naps go awry due to a day out or something by doing a long bath. She loves baths so we just let her play for a good 30min and top up water if needed.

Fate- that is incredibly helpful, thank you so so much. Sounds obvious now you have pointed it out but it hadn't occurred to me to insert a third nap temporarily- genius!

Shadowboy also a great idea- I only do baths every other day but might try daily to extend the day but in a gentle way that DD will enjoy!

Sorry to say my toddler wakes at 5.45 regardless of what time he goes to bed and has done since he was a baby. I don't think there is anything we haven't tried!

I had almost exactly the same problem after using a sleep consultant - I put the early wake ups partly down to the super early sunrise (despite using blackout blinds plus curtains) and clocks going forward.

The solution for us was to move bedtime later gradually - we moved it by 15 mins every 3 days until we were putting her down at 8pm. We didn't add a 3rd nap as she just refused to go down so a gradual adjustment suited us much better. We maintained 8pm bedtime whilst loosely following 2,3,4 routine and after a couple of weeks we achieved a 7.30ish wake up time. We still have occasional early wake ups but they are usually somewhere between 6.45 and 7.15 now with bedtime at 7.45-8pm.