Should I wake from morning nap?

[feelingsicknow]

DS is 10 months and never sleeps past 6am. I could just about cope with this but am worries about when I go back to work, how to get a shower etc before he wakes for the day without setting an alarm for 5.30am which just seems ungodly.

I just need him to sleep a little longer - maybe 6.30am-7.

His morning nap at 9am can last for two hours and I think I read on here very recently that waking him earlier from this nap might help extend his nighttime sleep? Can't remember who said it?....

His afternoon nap is never as long as this and is sometimes car based if we are out, so I think the morning nap might be the one to tackle.

Two hours (whilst brilliant for having a cuppa and getting things done!) seems a bit excessive.

Anyone got any experience of this?

What time does he go to bed? Maybe a later bedtime would help rather than reducing naps? It sounds to me like he needs that morning nap, he's still very young.

I found reducing the morning nap to around 45 mins - 1 hour and then having a 2 hour afternoon nap helped. My DS used to wake up at 5.10am exactly every morning and changing naps pushed it to 6.30am. He was just catching up on night time sleep with his long morning nap

Later bedtime hasn't resulted in a later wake up time sadly, although we haven't tried again for a while.

His bedtime is 7pm (asleep by 7.30)

I've never woken him from a nap before, and I hate the idea, but I don't want him replacing proper night time sleep with excessively long naps. I'm just trying to redress this balance.

Theworst - that's useful. I think that's what I'm aiming towards.

Just stick him in his cot while you have a shower.

It's sounds like he has a great routine and trying little adjustments to get him to sleep in longer are worth a go. We having very bright early mornings at the moment, I know as an adult tiredness doesn't stop me waking early and I seem to wake at 5.30 wide awake, even if my room is dark.

DS is eleven months adjusted and we hit this issue two months ago. Now he's waking between 7:15-7:30 most mornings, occasionally 6:30 when he's off schedule.

I had to push the morning nap back an hour to 10:30, second nap around 2:30, and in bed at 7:30, asleep for 8.

Then when he woke at 6:30 I just ignored until 7 and didn't feed until then. Took about a week but he adjusted.

I woke DS just by opening the door and curtains etc and bumbling around his room. As long as he’d had 1 full sleep cycle he seemed to wake up happy enough

These are really helpful, thank you. He is a good boy and does have a fairly good routine (albeit I have to feed/rock to sleep because of the standing in the cot - see my other posts, haha!)

I'm going to wake him after 1.5 hours this morning (he's down now) and then see what this afternoon and tomorrow brings. I'll have to go to bed early tonight. I should really do that every night (damn you, Love Island!!!)

Update: can I just say, he is still asleep

I found that at 12 months both mine went down to one nap at lunchtime most of the time due to starting nursery as that's the main pattern there. Maybe attempt to start moving towards that. Nursery do a really early lunch at 11:30 then nap 12-2ish.

When are you going back to work?

Also to be honest you are never going to be perfectly ready before your little one gets up or at least that doesn't work in our house. I let my 2 year old and 1 year old play while I'm getting ready. It's chaos but no way I'm getting up and ready before they wake up!!

They just sit on the floor playing or trying to put my makeup on etc. Lol

Well hopefully that will sort it...but it may not.

I'm EXACTLY the same as you. 10 months. We had a sleep consultant a while ago - she said limit morning nap to an hour and the afternoon a max of 2.

He still wakes up before 6, every bloody morning.

Brilliant 👍🏻 Hope it works going forward

Did the same today, although morning nap was actually in the car for 1 hour because I had to drop some stuff off at dog shelter (having a clearout in prep for renovations next month - just a few weeks before I go back to work 🙄 I know)

We'll see what happens tomorrow morning...

I've been thinking about moving towards the one nap but I don't think he's ready yet. However he starts nursery in 1 month and I think that will help with judging whether that's better for him. They let the babies have more than one nap if they need them but I will hopefully defer to their expertise....

Re getting ready - I'm fully prepped to be one of those annoying people doing make up on the train. I would just love to be able to shower before he wakes! Currently it's not a 'given' if I'll get a shower every day because we have the noisiest water pump known to man and it's opposite his room. Hopefully the renovations are going to solve that....

boomboom - how do you stop them from eating your make up? Seriously, I would happily let him play with my make up but I honestly think he would just wolf it all down?!! He eats paper, soil, fluff, books, tissues....