If DS wakes at 5am should I cut his morning nap?

[kbaby]

Ds has started waking up at 5am. Hes wide awake and no amount of cuddling him in bed works. Hell stay in his cot for 20mins or so but then yells to come out.
The problem is hes so tired by 9am that he sleeps until 11am, then has another 1hr nap at 4pm ish.
He goes to bed 8pm and wakes once at night for milk.
Hes 10 months

So should I wake him after 45 mins in the morning and get him to have a longer nap after dinner or wont it make any difference.

kbaby, do you think it has something to do with the light mornings? Could you darken his room at all?
I don't think cautting the morning nap will make any difference. It will change though. Annoying as it is at the mo he won't always wake at 5!

baby - uurgh! no advice but huge sympathies - mine wakes around 5:30 - 6am every morning .

What time does he go to bed? His afternoon nap seems quite late.

DS woke up at 4:45 this am, it seems to be getting earlier! I think I'm going to try to gradually push his am nap back towards 10am ish (about 8:20 /9 am now) to see if that helps

Seems to be a lot of us with the same early morning thing going on..

loads of us with early wakers . I am currently seeking sympathy on another early waking thread! Need to know that there are other mummies who post before 6am

oh and it was 5:22am today . Thought I was getting somewhere because yesterday it was 6:10am - positively a lie-in

Normal to me, you just have to get up with him im afraid. Cutting his naps wouldnt be a good move for his development, they need so many hours sleep at that age. Check the guidelines in your NHS book that HV gives you.

DS used to have a similar pattern at that age tbh. But it did gradually move back to a 6.30-7 am start over several months. It might improve when he drops down to one nap.

i wouldnt tamper with ds's naps. I need that space !

how old is he?

My 18 month old wakes at about 5.45 atm I leave him until 6.15 if I can put up with the indignant yells and "MUMUMUMUMUM".

Naps times don;t seem to have any effect on when he wakes up. I think its so light in the morning - have bin liners up at the moment but I'm going to splash out on a balck-out roller blind.

Snap Kewcumber. We have bin bags too - all over the patio doors in dds room. They look a right state!

its a tasteful look isn;t it? At least yours can't be seen from the street

i am proud to say that i have black out blinds. {{puffs out chest emoticon}}. I am embarassed to say that i have them draped over curtain rail

don't they let the light in down the sides that way I would even resort to gaffer taping the blinds flat to the window if I thought it would get me an extra 30 mins in bed!

oh god..i'm going backwards on this one.

I got 10 mth old ds to stay asleep until 6am with cc techniques but now he has slipped back again and I just haven't the energy to do it again before we gon on hols and the sleep goes pear shaped again.

To top it all... he doesn't sleep until 9pm. When we return from hols I wanna try and move his bed time to 8pm but am really scared he may start waking at 4am. Do you think this will happen?

hi ami . I don't think, from what i have heard from others and experienced with dd1, that it makes a jot of difference re: the adjustment of bedtimes. Just think, if you are knackered and you have an early night, you don't wake up ridiculously early the next day, you tend to wake at your usual time. Hopefully your lo will be the same. enjoy your hols. Wehre you going?

hi cruise

glad you're still around! We are off to california ( 8 hrs time back) then east coast ( 3 hrs forward from california) Just thinking about it gives me palpitations as i'm sure it's back to square one again when we get back but at least i can start with an earlier bedtime and get some more rest in the eve hopefully.

I'm just so knackered all the time..this am he woke at 4.45am, stayed awake in our bed until 5.30am and I was up for work at 6.15!

How easily we forget the days of being woken every 2-3 hrs!! Sleep is like money - it's never enough!!

Amijee, that's one hell of a trip!
I don't want to be nosy but are you visiting relatives?

Sorry, I am nosy. It's just that I have a lot of relatives in California and New Jersey myself.

You'll have so much fun, you won't need much sleep anyway!

Kbaby just seen you post. I found by delaying the morning nap & restricting it to no more than 45mins then letting her have a longer nap after lunch my dd has been going a little bit longer. So she woke at 5.15am!! this morning...bad naps yesterday I think were to blame. I put her down for her nap at 8.30am & she had 45mins, I then put her down at 12.40..she chattered for 20mins then fell asleep until 3pm. I have just put her to bed at 7.30pm so hopefully I am hoping for a 6am wake up...but now I have put this on here she will prob wake earlier. I found there was a fine line between being tired & overtired..cross it & she fell into a deep sleep early & knocked everything to pot. When she wakes at 6am she has a morning nap at 9/9.15 for 30mins then again at 1pm for 2hrs!! She says with crossed fingers. I think the later she wakes in the morning the shorter her morning nap will be. I do think early waking can happen if the longer nap is in the morning. But hey I am no expert...far from it! Good luck!

amysmum - so is there a corrolation (sp??) between how tired they are at bedtime ie how deeply they sleep initially and morning wakings? this is so effing confusing. I'm sure our forefathers didn't have this trouble!!!

Bozza- He goes to bed at 8pm. He never seems tired enough to have his nap any earlier than 4ish after his monster morning nap.

Weve got blackout blinds but theyre useless. The light gets in around the sides.

This is so confusing. I do find no matter what time he goes to bed he wakes the same time. Maybe ill have to try cutting the morning nap a bit, I mean surely he doesnt really want a 2hr nap only 3 hrs after he woke up??

I feel like the same names are cropping up from when our babies were a few mths old - except then they were feeding thru the night!

It makes me think they are genetically programmed to sleep in a certain way and it's very hard to change it.

I have tried looking at all sorts of things - long naps, short naps, overtired at bedtime, late nap before bed....none of it makes a blind bit of difference. I guess it's just adapting to them until they grow out of it.

Daddy - good to hear from you. My dh is american and this is my ds's 4th trip to the states! ( any wonder he has bad sleep?) I am really looking forward to it but I know we can't let ds cry in other people's houses so there'll be a lot of reluctant co-sleeping and feeding back to sleep I think. Any tips??

kbaby I have heard it said that sometimes a long morning nap is really an extension of their night's sleep if they are early wakers. I think it might be worth trying to swap the naps over for a few days and see how you go on. Then hopefully you could make the afternoon nap earlier. What is your DD up to these days. Are you tied by any preschool or whatever times for her?

amijee, at your ds's carbon footprint

I suspect you'll have to go with the flow while you're over there...
hope dh is ok with co-sleeping!

well, he used to be really against it but on occasions when ds has miraculously slept until 7ish and not come in our bed in the morning, dh has really missed him. ( he's also cried when I was telling him off for wantng to bring ds in our bed when we were doing cc!)