Early Wake Up and Poopy Diapers

[FrankiesMom12]

Hi all - I am not sure if I should post this here or over in the sleep forum, so please let me know if this is the wrong place!  I have been doing sleep training with help from Becky in the napping forum for about 3 weeks now.  Generally things are going very well (thanks Becky!) except for the last few days my little guy has had a pretty early wake-up.  I started paying more attention to it, and I really think it is due to poopy diapers.  He does not typically need to nurse until about 7 (and I honestly think he could go longer than that).  My question is, should I change something in his diet?  We started meats at 7 months, and he is now almost 7 months, two weeks.  I am not sure if that is the problem.  I have included his easy schedule below.  This is sort of an average day as it all depends on when he wakes up.  He WAS sleeping until about 7 for a week or so due to the sleep training, but the last few days have been pretty inconsistent.

If he wakes up later, I can skip the 3rd nap, but with the early wakeup, there is no way he can make it to bedtime.  Also, I am pretty convinced the reason he needs to nurse at 11:30 is because he is a VERY distracted nurser during the day.  I am really hoping by 9 months we will drop this feed, but not sure how it will happen.

5:45 - wake up
6:45 - nurse
7:45 - solids (2 tbsp rice cereal with 4 ounces fruit)
8:45 - 10:00 - nap 1
11:00 - nurse
12:00 - solids (4 ounces fruit and cereal mix)
12:30 - 2:00 - nap 2
3:00 - nurse
4:30 - solids (2 tbsp rice cereal with 4 ounces meat/veg puree)
5:00 - 5:30 - nap 3
6:30 - nurse
6:45 - bedtime routine
7:15 - Usually asleep, could take a bit longer
11:30 - nurse (this is not a dream feed, he just wakes up and wants to nurse at this time)

[creations]

I think at some point we all go through a frustrating phase of poo disturbing sleep (nights or naps or EWs) and there isn't a huge amount you can do about it.  however, if your gut feeling is that it is a meat meal causing the early morning poo you could switch the meals around and offer that meal at lunch or even breakfast time instead and see what happens after a few days.  If you are offering finger foods sometimes you can tell which meal it was because you see bits of it in the poo and might be able to shift things around a bit.  But really, the poo will eventually stop happening at that time even if you change nothing but ride it out.
You could also try a super fast clean up and nappy change in the dark and treat at a night wake and get him back in bed asap to see if he will resettle.  Long shot on EW and a poo though.

[nicolemca]

Just wanted to throw this out there...I read your post and your easy looked exactly like mine did when DS hit about 7.5 months. EWs which never let us drop the CN in the late afternoon because he could never make it to BT with an early PM nap. What really worked for us was pushing the A time first to 315 then to 330 which ended up moving his PM nap to later in the afternoon and then he could easily make it to BT. I had read on here somewhere that the cn at that age causes too much daytime sleep so they get up earlier. We struggled to drop the cn officially until we upped the A time, he hasn't taken one since and the EWs are few and far between now. Perhaps confirm this with one of the moderators though, I'm just speaking from our experience. I feel your pain though we were up at 5 or 530 for over month until we figured it out!!