5 month old with early waking...

[Nickie18]

So, overall we are doing pretty well, but recently she has been waking early in the am. we have stretched her A time given short naps and now she has A time of about 3 hours with naps from 1h-1h20min- only 2 naps now most days if both naps are long with EBT. She sleeps from about 7:30 until 5:45/6am. Usually just rolling around quietly in her bed until I wake up and see her. Then she will whine, we feed her half a bottle and most of the time she goes back to sleep until we wake her at 8am to start the day. Not sure what we are doing ot get the EW. We have tried getting her up when she wakes and she is not happy. Any tweaks to our schedule?

bed- 7:30pm
wake- 5:45am
feed in room/dark- 6:15am
Sleep by 6:30/6:45am
Wake her at 8am
Feed at 9am
solids at 10am
nap at 11am
she wakes at 12:20pm
Feed at 12:30pm
cereal at 1:30pm
nap at 3:20pm
she wakes at 4:20pm
bed at 7:15pm last night
woke at 5:45am

Any ideas? her naps are maybe UT at 1h and 1h 20min?

Thank you-

[Buttonbobs]

Your night actually looks pretty good to me. Is she going to sleep at 7.30 and waking at 8am (with the night feed at around 6)? This doesn't really seem like an early waking, which we would class as less than 10.5 hours total night sleep. It is very normal for LOs of this age to still have at least one night feed. Are you feeling like she no longer needs the feed?

I agree naps of under 1.5 hours isn't ideal. Has she ever taken naps for longer than 1.5 hours? How long ago did she drop the CN?

[Nickie18]

I think she could make it to at least 7:30am without a feed. Today she woke at 6:30am (bedtime at 7:30p) and we just got her up and did not feed her until 7:15am. She just got her first tooth popping out, but her fussy phase is finally over so she is not too bad from that But much more alert and trying to crawl... Maybe try W2S?
She used to take longer naps, like 2 hours, after a short nap and a shorter A time. Seems like now she is splitting the sleep better. She usually gets around 2.5 hours, so still not enough daytime sleep.

Maybe wake her at 3 or 4am for a feed? though I hate starting a new feed when she never took the DF

[Buttonbobs]

It is quite normal to still have a night feed at this age, and without a DF I would expect that to be around 5/6am. But if you are sure she's not hungry you could either try an earlier feed or W2S around 4.30am, or if she's not crying on WU just leave her to it until 7ish when you want to feed her. She might then learn that she won't be fed until then and eventually go back to sleep.

As I believe a night feed of one kind or another is normal until solids feeding is well established, if you try the later, just keep an eye on weight gain and if demand for food in the daytime increases you might need to restart the NF.

What do you think?

[Martini~]

Agree with Naomi that it might behunger.

It's your choice how to tackle it but I would be tempted to feed her quickly at 5:30/6:00 when she wakes with small portion and let her sleep till 8am and than keep 11,5h days which suits well your routine with rather short napping. If you start the day at 6:30 or earlier and have 2 naps summing to max 2.5h of sleep it maybe a bit OT to work on 13h day.
As you are bottle feeding you can try to give her less and less for this early morning feed for the next 2 months and I would say that if your DD will take 3-4 full feeds a day and will have 3 solids meals established you may think of dropping that feed around 7mo (or 6 or 8:D).

To prevent early waking you may also try to cap her first nap at 45min and do a long pm nap up to 2h (you say it's in her reach but only if she had shorter first nap). But you say you prefer/ she prefers this split of sleep which is also fine. I would be probably tempted to try short-long nap solution as you may get 2:45 of day sleep and usually 2h nap is much more restorative than 1-1:20. But leave it to your judgment!

[Nickie18]

I think you are right- this morning she woke at 5am, looked like she was asleep and then cried... Hunger I think. Gave her 5 oz as she guzzled it down. So, for now we will just continue to feed her and hope she goes back to sleep. She fell asleep at 5:30am after feed and woke at 7:30am, so not too bad. So I guess it really is not an early waking.

I always worry about capping any nap with her now as I never know if she will actually take a longer nap later. She just went down to 2 naps, so maybe will start capping once she seems more predictable.

Thank you both for the advice!

[Martini~]

Keeping fingers crossed for dropping this feed soon:). I am pretty sure it will be at her reach but give her still some time. She is doing very nice long stretch already so you are nearly there.

[Buttonbobs]

Good stuff