How do I push back the morning wake up?

[mrs_kat]

My daughter Kenzie goes to bed around 9:00-9:30 at night.  For about a week back in November, she was sleeping through until around 7:30 in the morning.  Since then, she's started waking anytime between 5:00 and 6:30 for a feeding, then back to bed until I get her up at 8:30.  Since my husband works late and we go to bed late, I've been enjoying sleeping in so I've been lazy about trying to push back that feeding.  It's so much easier to feed and go right back to sleep.

I've started giving smaller feedings at that early wakeup, just enough that Kenzie seems satisfied enough to go back to sleep.  If I want her to start lasting until 7:30 again (better yet, 8:00 or so!), should I give a smaller and smaller feeding in the hopes she'll stop waking early for it, or should I just try to get her back to sleep without feeding at all?

Thanks so much!
Kat

[Jaime]

how old is she?  what does a typical day look like?

[mrs_kat]

Mackenzie will be 5 months in a few days.

Typical day lately:
5:00-6:30 (somewhere in there) - small feed, back to sleep
8:30 - wake and bf
10:30 - sleep (anywhere from 30-45 minutes, if 45 seems happy)
11:30 - bf
1:30 - sleep (again, 30-45)
2:30 - bf
4:30 - sleep (30-45, sometimes longer if the first two were 30 min)
5:30 - bf
7:15 - catnap
7:45 - bath and low-key activity
8:30 - bf
9:00 - story, song,  prayer, bed

After the first feed, the times are give or take 15 minutes, depending on how long (rather, how SHORT!) the previous nap was.

Because of the short naps, we're still on the 3 hour easy.  I've never had success extending them.  As I said above, if she sleeps 45 she seems content, so I'm thinking that to move to a 3.5 easy, I may just have to wait until she can do longer awake times.

The short naps are another reason that I haven't tried yet to push the early morning feeding back and start the day at 7:30.  I felt like if I did that, she would either end up taking 5 naps or would have an earlier bedtime which might mean not lasting until 7:30 the following day.  (Does that make sense?)

I was having trouble figuring out if the early morning feed was genuine hunger.  First of all, she's lasted as long as 7:50 before.  Second, although she will eat as long as I'll let her, I found that I could feed for only five minutes and put her back in her crib and she'll go back to sleep.  I guess I'm just nervous about not feeding her if that's what she needs.  I've never been able to distunguish her hunger cry from just a fussy cry, so I can't use that as a factor. 

Anyway, that's a long post, but I just wanted you to have all the info you need.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Kat