8 month old has suddenly started waking at 5am having slept til around 7.30 since birth (albeit with between 1 and 500000 wakings in the night depending on his age). At the same time, he's stopped waking in the night and he is tired and has really long naps in the day.
Current pattern is 1.5 hour nap 9am, 1.5 hour nap 1pm, 30-45 minutes at 4.30/5. I usually wake him up from the second two to avoid lots of extra daytime sleep hours. He then sleeps at 7/7.30, wakes up howling after 30 minutes, goes straight back to sleep (with help usually), and sleeps through to 5 then is awake for the day.
This is an overnight change from naps being chaotic but overall 3 naps of which one was usually more than an hour and two usually 30-60 mins. Or they might all be about an hour. Sometimes he's have a 2.5 hour nap + a 1hr+ and only have two naps. I'd often wake him up from the last one. Then sleep around 7 and might wake up before midnight and almost always once in the early hours - straight back to sleep if I fed him.
I had been thinking maybe it's time for 2 naps but any attempt I make to stretch his awake time and leave him asleep results in him seeming exhausted, he really struggles to be awake more than 2 hours still.
Everything I read suggests waking after an hour and early wakings are overtiredness but surely 3-4 hours of napping is plenty and more likely too much?
Any ideas? I'm wondering if I need to persevere with going to two naps (I only tried once or twice as it made things worse) given his age. But he could also just be having a higher sleep need at the moment? I can't believe I'm waking him up from naps it seems wrong!
Appreciate it's not the end of the world...lucky me with a sleeping baby! However he seems so tired in the day after getting up early it's hard to know what to do.