New has become standard 5am waking!

[marilyn73]

Hi,
I used to come here all the time with my first 2 daughters, who required sleeping training for naps, to STTN, etc….
My 3rd daughter, now 9 mths old naturally started STTN at 8 weeks - this lasted a solid month, and then maybe 1 night/ week she's wake early - since we were still well in the realm of potentially needing a night feed, I obliged, and dd would sleep again until her normal wake up time.
1/ week has become like 75% of the time at least, and I really want to get back on track.

Here is our EASY
7:00-7:30am wake up, then BF, breakfast (solids well established), play
10:30 - 12:00 nap, then BF, lunch, and play
3:15-4:45pm nap, then BF supper, and play
6:30pm - bath
7:15pm - BF and to bed
5:00am - wake, BF, falls back asleep.
and we're back at the beginning.

We really have no shhh/patting, PU/PD, WI/WO skills with this one as never needed, and then the problem just crept up on us.
IF she wakes, which is rare,  and it's before 3am, I can go it, pickup, hold for maybe 30 sec, PD and it's done.
If it's 4am or later, she protests (cries, back arch, etc) and I really haven't let it go on more than 1-2 min because I've always felt that there is no way she would settle at that time without a feed.
So now I've AP'd with the feed at 5am, but I really don't know what to do about it.
I'm aware of wake to sleep, but haven't tried it.
I think the waking may be habitual, but it's close to wakeup time, so maybe ?hunger too?

I really don't want a ton of screaming getting my other two awake (4 and 6), so I might plot to spend a few days with Grandma….

Advice, please.  I'm writing this a 11:30pm because I keep forgetting until I'm about to go to bed myself
 

[Emami]

It's great that she's an independent sleeper Looking at your routine I think she might be UT, so maybe a little tweak is all it needs for her to sleep through to morning, or at least be able to settle herself as she does at other times. I think she may not be quite tired enough to go back down by herself at the moment. She is getting 3hrs of sleep during the day, so to expect 12hrs from her overnight is probably a bit much. Is she HSN?

I would try either capping one of the naps or stretching one of her A times out, probably the last one as she is only doing 2.5hrs to bed off the back of a good long nap.  Do you have school runs or things with your older children to work around?  There are probably things that affect what you're able to do routine-wise but she definitely seems like a good sleeper, so hopefully will adapt quickly to whatever works for you!

[marilyn73]

Hi, sorry for my slow reply!
I would've got back to this sooner, but the last 2 days dd slept until 7am.  And this is partly why I haven't taken any action, she keeps fooling me!
I don't know about UT as an issue - she's totally ready at 7:15pm and can't last another minute - that said, she isn't overtired either - she has a switch of perfectly happy and joyous, 1 cranky yelp - and then I hustle her into her sleep sack and she settles into her last feed, usually conking out.

The other kids complicate things for sure.  I can't shorten the morning nap because my school pickup has pushed baby's nap from 2:45 to 3:15 already. I definitely don't want to cut the afternoon one either because on occasion I can actually cook then!  About 1/2 the time she gets 90 min of afternoon sleep, but sometimes she's rudely awoken by her sisters after only 45 min.
My other 2 daughters slept nearly 4 hrs in the day + 12.5-13 hr nights, so I have I have hight expectations!  They both required sleep training to drop the last night feed, but once done, that was it.
This one's a little trickier - not that I feel hard done by!  I just don't want to AP by BF'ing at 5am.  This won't really be a viable option once I'm back to work in December either.  She's been an angel baby from the start.  Currently 9 mth old.  I forgot to include that before.

I will update if needed, but send along any further ideas.