9 month old waking at 5am :-(

[SorchaM]

I've read through countless early waking posts and articles but haven't yet found a solution...our 9 month old started waking at 5am every morning just after Christmas (used to wake at 7 am every day, and have 2 naps, 9-11 and 2-4 and then bed at 8pm).  He dropped his night feed a week or so before as he settled just as well with a drink of water and a cuddle.  He doesn't seem to be starving or anything, just wide awake!  In the past week we have also made sure to push back his morning nap and shorten it so that it's not a continuation of night sleep.
The day goes something like this:

Wake 5am
Attempt to resettle/quiet time in bedroom 5-6
Breakfast 7 (or as close as possible as he will go)
Bottle 8.30
Nap 8.45
Wake 10.15 (Used to easily go 2-2.5 hrs, now capping at 1.5 to try to stop the early waking!)
Lunch 11.30
Bottle 1pm
Nap 2pm
Wake 4pm (usually naturally, sometimes wake him)
Bottle 4pm
Dinner 6pm
Bath & Bottle 7.30pm
In bed by 8pm usually asleep pretty much straight after bottle (doesn't always feed to sleep and goes down fine for naps with no bottle)

Putting him to bed earlier doesn't work, a) he won't sleep any earlier and ends up crawling and standing in the cot for hours and b) daddy gets home at 7.30pm, he wouldn't see LO at all if we move bedtime (though willing to try this for a week if I had good evidence that it would do anything!)
Shortening the afternoon nap just makes him seriously overtired by bedtime.

Any ideas?  Should we try shortening the morning nap even more?  It's already quite difficult for him to get through lunchtime to afternoon nap, he's never had particularly long A times.

I've read numerous posts from people with the same problem but no solutions that we haven't yet tried, hoping someone will see something in the routine above that we don't see! 

Thanks :-)

[lauradj]

EW's can be VERY frustrating.  I know you already said that an earlier bed time is not effective for your LO but to be honest, 8pm is really late for a little guy who's waking at 5am.  It's very likely he's not having a sound sleep because he's over-tired.  I do also understand how difficult it is for Dads who work late to not see their children but you cannot ask a child to adjust to an adults schedule.  Their needs are so completely different from ours.
I would also suggest you cap the afternoon nap at 1.5 to see if that helps at all.  Two 1.5 naps is still quite a good amount of day time sleep and if you put DS to bed for 7pm instead of 8, you'll likely start to see a positive change.  It may be that your LO doesn't immediately begin to sleep later in the mornings with an earlier bed time.  It may take 2 weeks but I think it's worth an honest, consistent shot.  Most LO's (unless they have LSN's) keep a 12 hr day.  There was a period of about two weeks to a month, where our LO was waking at 5/5:30am but he was closer to 11 months.  I took that as a sign he was ready for the 2-1 transition and that solved the issue.
Below I've included a few links that may help you.  Please let me know if you have any questions.
Average A times- BOOKMARK ME!!
Typical Amounts of Day and Night Sleep