5 am wake ups - help, bloody knackered

[Sleeplessmummyinlondon]

18 month old has been sleeping through the night since 12 months. Put down awake for bed and naps. Did not do CIO, did gentle sleep/Pantley shush pat sorts of things.

For last month or so LO has been waking at 5 am. We have gotten an extra layer of blackout curtain (so two layers total!) and run a white noise machine throughout the night. Sleeps in sleeping bag (tog adjusted according to room temp).

Routine is this:
Wake up at 5/5:15
Nap 11:30/12 - if down at 11:30, will wake up 1.5 hours later. If down at 12 or after, will sleep 2+ hours (I suspect overtired and natura rhythm seems to be to want to sleep at 11:30?)
Bedtime 6:30/7. Sometimes chatters in cot for a solid 30-45 minutes. Sleeps through until 5ish.

Is my baby just a lark? Or can we adjust something so that wake up time is at least 6/630? I’m knackered. I suspect that longer naps may correlate with earlier wake up but have been using an app and it seems not to actually matter

Any thoughts or help? TIA xx

Please look at twinningituk on Instagram. They posted yesterday (day 6) about early wake ups. Also I've heard that if you wake baby gently around 15 minutes before they usually wake then settle them back to sleep they will sleep through that wake up and onto the next sleep cycle!

You won’t want to hear this but some children are just early risers unfortunately. We tried everything with dd1 and nothing worked. She doesn’t sleep past 6am now and she’s 12.

I would suggest pushing bedtime significantly later - in the region of 8pm. To do this push lunchtime nap later, starting around 1pm and allowing sleep until 4pm latest (likely wake 3pm though).

There will be a transition period for this though, which needs working out. It might take 3 weeks or so to see an effect of the transition. It might initially mean you do a morning catnap, starting between 9am-10am if you can manage it, for 45 minutes (one sleep cycle). This may itself push the afternoon nap later, with more of a 2pm start (waking 4pm latest). But it's just in the interim, while transitioning to a single 1pm nap and 8pm bedtime.

Sadly no matter what we did ir do with our 2.5 year old, 5am is his wake up. If you can name it, we have done it, from external changes (black out blinds etc) to shifting around naps, bedtime, to ways if dealing with him at the early wake.

Nothing

Worked

Now at least he knows not to bother us til gro clock sun comes up.at 6