5am waking

[Elissamelady]

Hello,

I'm hoping for some tips, hints and insight as to what to do now that my 6.5 month old is waking at 5am.
we went through a hard time of NW until she was 4.5 month, then we decided to sleep train and ever since she has been sleeping 7.30pm to 7am with a dream feed at 10.30pm and she has been a much happier less tired baby for it.

Now though she wakes at 5. She starts off talking, then it turns into moaning and eventually crying, or rather getting very cross. I have avoided feeding as I'm worried we will un do all the hard work of sleep training but last night I caved and fed her. She was not hungry but it soothed her and she went back to sleep until 7am. I think she would have gone longer but my husband woke her getting ready for work.

Our routine looks like this now...

5am NW - either feed to sleep or self sloths (but that can take her an hour plus)
E 7am up, breast fed
8am breakfast (fruit couple of oz)
S 9.30 nap (any earlier and she is UT and wakes after 45 min, but now she is waking at 5 maybe I should tweak this?)
E 10.30/11 breast fed
12.00 lunch (veg, couple of oz)
S 1pm nap
E 2/2.30 breast fed
S 4/4.30 nap (catnap for 45min)
E 5pm breast fed, dinner veg a couple of oz)
E 7pm breast fed, and bedtime
S 7.30 bedtime
E 10.30 dream feed

She has got her bottom two teeth now, but I don't think that is what is causing the wakings as they appeared several weeks ago now and she didn't seem to fuss when they broke through.

One thing I have noticed is she gets more disturbed when I do the dreamfeed than before, she used to stay pretty asleep, now she wakes up and looks around, maybe time to drop that?!

Any advice appreciated.

[Charjanemom]

We are going through a tough patch too. Feed back I have gotten is that we need to try to get them to 3 hr A time and drop the pre bed cat nap. It's so hard!!
Regarding the dream feed my daughter started doing that and not taking it all so we just stopped it. I actually slept through it one night and she slept so I dropped it.

Good luck.

[Erin M]

Hi, I'd agree with the PP -- it sounds like it's probably time to drop the CN.  I'd stretch your A times out towards 3 hours and if you need to, do an early bed time if you're getting too long of a day after that first nap. 

[Elissamelady]

Thank you so much. Actually I think she can do 3 hrs A time, I was just worried I'd exhaust her, but we have had to do it before and she didnt mind much.

Only concern is if she doesn't nap for long, say just an hour, should I still push her to go 3 hours Atime, or should I let her take the lead if she seems tired?

Might try dropping the dreamfeed once we have fixed the 5am waking, otherwise ill worry she's waking up at 5 because she's hungry.

Thank you again!

[Erin M]

If its a short nap, you probably want to do a shorter A time so she doesn't get OT for the next nap.  It might take you some days of tweaking to figure out the exact A time that you need to get 2 good solid naps.