1 year old -- transitioning out of early wakeups

[Paulsmama]

Thanks to Layla and others from this board and the PU/PD board, DS#2 is now sleeping through the night and goes down independently for naps and at night    The bad news is he is waking early, sometimes as early as 4:45.  My older DS also did this right after we finished sleep training, only I don't remember how long it took to fix or how we sorted it out    Should I just wait a few more days until he gets more adjusted to sleeping through the night and then try pushing his whole day back?  Any ideas?  The room is extremely dark until some time after 6 when light from the hallway shines under the door (black plastic on the outside of the windows).

Here's what our days look like generally:

5:30ish wake
8:45-9:30 nap 1 (30-45 mins, we wake him)
12:45-2:15 nap 2
6:15 bed, all's quiet by 6:45

I actually don't mind getting up at 5:30.  It's 4:45 that's hard, but if he wakes before 5 there is some chance he will go back to sleep.  Unless he is crying I will leave him until 5:15 or so.  We don't leave his room until 5:30.  The other day for example he woke around 4:45, started crying around 5, I went to get him and cuddled him and he fell back to sleep until 6.  This morning he woke at 5:05 and was up for the day, so we did:

5:05 wake
8:20-9:15 nap (woke him up)
12:45-2:20 nap (woke him up)
6:20 bed, all quiet by 6:40

[Layla]

Hey Cynthia

I am so happy that he sleeping well!

When I was trying to change the wake up time... I found that I had to keep the morning nap at the same time regardless of when she would wake. So for example, if he wakes at 5.30 am, I would do a morning nap at 9am & no earlier. I know thats a fairly long stretch but he seems to be sleeping enough at night so he should be well rested & be easier to stretch. So ultimately you want to move his day forward so that he goes to sleep around 7pm & wakes around 6am.

Aim for something like this:

9-9:45 - morning nap
1-2.30 - afternoon nap
6.30 - bed (to be asleep by hopefully)

Then in about 3-4 days you could start adding 15mins to his morning nap & do
9:15-10am
1.15ish-2:45 - afternoon nap
6:45 - bed

9:30-10:15 - morning nap
1.30-3pm - afternoon nap
7pm - bedtime

It took us about 6 weeks but it was a matter of her getting enough rest at night & then pushing her day forward. Also at that age she could only do about 4hrs before bedtime (that is, she had to be asleep by the 4hr mark) so maybe he is getting slightly overtired & waking up earlier some days (like the days he wakes at 4:45am)

Finally wanted to say that I would religiously wake him up at 45mins into the morning nap (as well as keep the morning nap at no earlier than 9am) ... just letting you know how we got out of the early morning wake up cycle

[Paulsmama]

Thanks.  Maybe I should treat the early wakings as night wakings?  This morning I heard him talking on the monitor at 4:20 and he just blabbed and whined until 5, when I went to get him up he fell back asleep right away and slept until 6:05.  Then he refused his morning nap and napped 12-2:15.  I'm thinking I will still put him down at 6:15 or should I try to stretch him?

[Layla]

I would do bedtime around 6.30 as well (so that he is asleep by about 4.5hrs A time - 6:45pm)