Hi, I'm looking for some advice regarding my LO's DF. He's 5.5 months old, is EBF, is an angel baby, doesn't have a dummy (anymore!), has been on EASY since birth and is currently on a 3.5 (just) routine. He was born a month early, so I'm treating him like a 4.5 month old, rather than 5.5. Give or take, our days look like this:
Wake and BF 6am
Sleep 8am for usually only 40mins. We're often out for this nap, so I don't get the opportunity to extend. Sometimes he will sleep 1.5hrs here, but its the exception rather than the rule.
E 9.30ish
S @ approx 2hrs after he woke from nap#1. This nap will be somewhere from 40mins to 2 hrs long.
E 1ish
S @ approx 2 hrs after he woke from nap #2. If the first two naps have been short, this naps will be 2 hrs or so. I have found that as long as he takes one long nap during the day, he seems ok with 2 other short naps.
E 4.30ish
Bath
E 6ish
Bed 6.15
DF 9.30 -10
NF somewhere between 2 and 4. However, in the last week or 10 days, he has just started to sleep through (10-6) a few nights. They're not consecutive, but all of a sudden, he's just done it, without moving the NF too close to wake up.
So back to my original issue - the DF. I've always given him a DF around 10pm. I can't stay up much longer than that, so typically it's been 9.45-10ish. For the past few weeks, he's been waking for it (rather than me feeding him in his sleep). He feeds and goes back to sleep without a problem. However, he's now started to wake earlier and earlier for it. Each night it has been getting 5-10mins earlier and tonight he woke just before 9. If I try to resettle, he screams and just gets worked up and I figure its about 3 hours since his BT feed, so I just feed and he goes straight back to sleep. But what's going on here? Is this connected to his short naps? As noted above, he's just started to STTN every few days and I don't want to drop the DF and end up keeping the NF. He's 4.5months (corrected age) and Tracey recommends that you don't phase out the DF til about 7-9 months right?
Any thoughts would be appreciated :-)