Waking multiple times in the hours after bedtime

[MakingMischief]

Hi everyone,

Colin (31 weeks) has recently been waking frequently in the first few hours after bedtime. He'll go down for the night at 6:30 (we put him down awake and he falls asleep by himself) and between 6:30 and 10:30 he'll wake up 3-4 times. I posted in another thread that he's been having issues with rolling himself over and waking up, which we're still working on, but in the meantime I'm wondering if he's UT or OT at bedtime.

He's pretty stuck on the 6:30 bedtime, even if his naps run late, if I try to put him to bed later he's a mess. He's on a 2.5-3 hour EASY (depending on how much sleep he got the night before), and our typical day looks something like this:

6:30 - Awake, BF
7:30 - Morning catnap (I don't know what's up with this, it's just a quirk of his. After an hour of his WT he gets very grumpy and starts rubbing his eyes, and goes right to sleep when I put him in his crib. I'm thinking once he starts to STTN we'll work on dropping it.)
8:30 - Awake, BF
9:30 - Solids (typically fruit, maybe some yogurt)
11am-11:30am - Nap
12pm-1pm - Awake, BF (his naps usually last an hour to an hour and a half, we're working on extending)
1pm-2pm - Solids (fruit and veg)
2:30-3:30 - Afternoon nap
4pm-4:30 - Awake, BF (I don't let him sleep after 4:30 in the afternoons)
5:30 - Solids (usually whatever we're having for dinner or had the night before)
6pm - BF again, start bedtime routine (Bath, book, top-off bottle, then bed)
6:30 - In his crib awake

Thoughts? I appreciate any help

[Erin M]

Wakings early in the night are usually OT.  It could be that with him taking 3 shorter naps, that he's just getting an OT build up throughout the day and it's causing the wakings.  ISWYM about the cat nap at 7:30 -- what I will tell you though, is that sometimes out LOs get used to sleeping at a certain point of the day -- it's like their programmed to sleep at that point and they can't work past it without some help.  My ds would do the same thing, but I'd never get a decent nap out of him until I pushed his A time.  So, it might be worth trying to do it slowly (to avoid more OT) in order to get a decent first nap (which would then help the rest of your day).  What do you think?