Another early morning waking thread - sorry!

[feesh]

DS is just a week shy of 11 months. For the past 6 weeks or so, he’s been frequently waking between 4 and 5am for the day - wide awake, playful, happy. I breastfeed him but he doesn’t seem too interested and it doesn’t make him sleepy enough to go back to sleep. I don’t think he actually needs the feed at that time.

The only times he doesn’t do it are if he woke in the night for a feed around 2.30/3am - then I can usually get him back off to sleep again and he will sleep until 6am when we normally all get up for the day.

He goes to bed at 7pm. His morning nap is around 9/9.30am and is normally until about 11am. However, I have been waking him up after 45 minutes for the last 3 days to see if it helps with the early morning waking (it doesn’t).

Even if he woke up super early, he still has to wait until 9am for his nap.

(On the rare occasion that he woke in the night for a feed and then slept as late as 7am, I have had major trouble trying to persuade him to go down for a nap at 9am - he just isn’t tired if he’s onky been awake 2 hours).

He then he has an afternoon nap at 2pm which lasts about an hour, sometimes a bit longer.

Since I’ve been chopping the morning nap short, I’ve been bringing the afternoon nap back to 1pm, but he’s only stayed asleep for max 1 hour so he’s very cranky by bedtime.

How do I fix this 4.30am wake up? It’s killing me!

Just bumping this up as it’s an ongoing problem. He wakes up at 4.30am every single morning, wide awake and ready to start the day. It’s driving me insane! He is now a lot hungrier when we wakes up and demands a good feed straight away, but he won’t go back to sleep.

I’ve tried cutting his morning nap down to 60 mins at 9am, but it’s made no difference

Is he teething? I didn't know it, but apparently that's a cause of EMW's

What fixes my Dd's EMW's is if I make her nap at /after 9, but I see you're already doing that

I'm not a real fan of Gina Ford but in one of her books I've seen she recommends cutting naps by ten mins per day each day so maybe do that with the morning one instead of cutting it in one chunk, so he gradually gets used to the shorter nap rather than have it "abruptly" cut?

Things which have helped my emw somewhat were

Keeping first nap to one hour
And not letting him nap until nap one should be if he woke at sensible time
Also I leave him in crib and don’t put lights on till it’s a sensible time - also means he can handle awake time better. He’s happy playing in there for 30-45 Mins.
ALso bedtime later for us, as he only does 10.5-11 hours.8pm working better for us.

It took about 6 weeks of these things to shift from 530 to 630/7! It’s a hard thing to change and won’t happen in a few days!!!

Good luck it’s such a killer!!!!

I’ve also read it can
Happen if ur wake time from last nap to bed is too short so baby not tired enough and wakes early? Wasn’t in our case but might be worth looking at that gap? No idea wot it should be for 11 mo as mine is 6!

My DS went through a stage like this. A few weeks of consistently waking at 4am, ready for the day. Was hell to be honest. He was a bit older though than you DS. It did pass after a few weeks.

Thanks for your advice, I really appreciate it
He slept through until 5.45 this morning, which I am OVERJOYED about

I have to go in when he wakes up, because he cries - he’s not one to happily sit in his cot playing, unfortunately.

He’s always such a happy chap - I’m starting to wonder if I’m trying to give him too much sleep and he’d be better off with just one nap. What do you reckon?

He slept till 6am this morning. @Tryingno1 I think you might be right - yesterday he had a shorter and earlier afternoon nap.

I think that might be the solution - thank you!