2yo 5.30am wake but cranky + tired. Routine help?

[Tulip89]

Anyone have any suggestions to tweak his routine to help him sleep more at night? He seems happiest when he has at least 10hrs which happens sometimes but recently seems to regularly only manage 9-9.5hrs and wakes at 5.30am. Sleeps through 90% of time luckily!

5.30 wake up
12.30 or 1pm nap for 1 hour (I wake him after 1hr as bedtime takes ages if he sleeps longer. Now takes 15-30 mins to fall asleep)
7.30 or 8pm bedtime (normally work out 6hrs from nap wake up time)

• Has black out blind + black out curtains
• White noise
• Tried less of a wake window/earlier bedtime but it just takes longer for him to fall asleep and then he still wakes early
• Had some success with extending his last wake window last time he had early wakes. Managed to get him to sleep consistently sleep to 6-6.30am this way but struggling to extend it anymore when bedtime is already 8pm-ish
• wake up time/night time sleep total doesn’t change when he happens to have a short 40 min nap
• Won’t nap any earlier. If he’s had a good night, putting him down to nap at 12.30pm will just result in a short nap as he’s not tired enough

I haven’t tried ditching his nap as I don’t think he’d make it. He still seems to need it. Or are all these things signs it needs to go? Could it just be regression? Would a gro clock help a 24 month old?

Thanks

I would try ditching the nap

This was exactly like my DS and I really thought he needed the nap but dropping it was what helped and in the end I wish I had done it sooner! We had a rocky couple of weeks whilst he got used to it and then it was fine.

@wombpaloumbpa how old was he and how did you do it? Is 24 months too young? I know it can be normal to nap some days and not others but how do you decide when to not let him nap? He’s pretty good at always going for a nap, it’s just his nap length that varies if he’s not very tired. So it’s not like he fights it and then I can get him up.

I think we started cutting it down so he was just doing 20 mins or so. Then started doing it every other day then just when he was behaving erratically and needed a reset.
I think he was a little older actually maybe 2 years 6 months. Once we dropped the nap he often woke past 6am!

Oh yes ditch all the naps. I ditched all naps at 18 months with both DC. I found napping so restrictive, having to have a sling (heavy), pram, seat or bed available for an hour in the middle of the day and having to change my schedule just so they could take that hour or so and minus it from their night time sleep. They never ever slept more on 24 hours because of a nap, it must meant the time was taken from my night sleep because they'd be up for the same amount of time as a the nap at 3am for the day.

A gro clock works wonders for mine slightly older though 2 years 8 months

Sounds like he no longer needs that nap op. Maybe try a Power Nap after lunch so just 20 mins first bit he sounds like he's getting too much day sleep

Dd1 was about his age when she no longer needed hers

If dropping a nap doesn't work maybe you need to try to push bedtime a bit later with a longer nap. I have a 25m DD and she naturally only sleeps 10h a night so to get her to sleep to 7am she goes to bed 9pm. She definitely still needs her nap.

I’m fine with a 6am wake up, so in theory him going to bed at 8pm would be the same as your little one going to bed at 9pm and wake up at 7am and should allow him to sleep 10hrs at night. He just doesn’t 😩

Do you think? Even though when he has a 40 min nap, it makes no difference to wake up time?

He napped 40 mins yesterday as I think he wasn’t quite ready to nap, bedtime was 10 mins earlier than usual as he seemed shattered but he still only slept 9.5 hours overnight 😩

If your DS only sleeps 9.5h then maybe you should push his bedtime to 8.30pm so it takes him to 6am. Or 9pm takes him to 6.30am. Maybe 9.5h is his natural length.

Your wake windows are all wrong. He’s going at least 7 hours in the morning before napping. Then only having 5-6 hours of wake time before night sleep.

You need that to be the other way round. He needs the biggest chunk of wake time before night sleep.

But if he won’t go down for a nap any early then I think you have two options: Make bedtime later or drop the nap.

24 months is young to drop. But certainly not unheard of. DC1 was done napping not long after this. I would probably try this in your situation as I bet his overall sleep need will increase if he isn’t cutting out sleep pressure in the middle of the day.

If you do drop the nap, you’ll need to bring bedtime much, much earlier and you’ll likely still get 5am wake ups for a while. But once he is sleeping more at night you can slowly start shifting everything later. He might sleep 6pm-5am for a while then you can start nudging it.

If you hold on to the nap, push bedtime to 8:30 or 9pm and aim for your 9-10 hours then, which would give you roughly a 6:30am start.