Another 5am wake up question :)

[BessieLondon]

So my 7.5 month old has been waking at 4.45-5.15am everyday for about 2 months. I've tried leaving him in his cot but he is really unhappy after 20 mins and crying after 30. He wakes up happy and full of energy but is tired again after an hour.
His room is very dark and he regularly goes through the night without waking, so I don't think it's a light or self settling problem (although I do often have to rock him to sleep).
He's never been a good napper and though he is napping ok at the moment, it's not consistent so I never have two days the same. He also has a really early bedtime, 6pm everyday, because he's always exhausted and grumpy by then. Moving it back has always resulted in over tiredness and night wakings, although I've never really had the heart to keep him up past 6.15 as he is so miserable!

The most frequent pattern for a day is like this

5 - wake
5.30 - up, a time
6.30/7 - nap (30 mins)
7.30 - breakfast then a time
9.45/10 - nap (around 1.5 hours)
12 - lunch then a time
3 - nap (30-40 mins)
5 - dinner
5.30 - bath
6 - milk then bed

Any suggestions?

[jessmum46]

I think probably you need to move towards 2 naps - basically you are in an UT/OT loop from what I can see, resulting on bad naps, an early bedtime and therefore perpetuating an early start.  Most LOs at this age can easily handle 3h A time - your LO is doing some super-short A times in the morning, and then has a long afternoon on very little sleep.  I would think just pushing out the A times a bit will sort things out - perhaps take a week or two but if you stick with it you should see results

I would start with your first A time - currently 1.5-2h from what I can see.  Make that 2h15 straight away and hold at that for 3 days.  Then push to 2h30 for 3 days etc until you start getting a longer nap.  After that nap push for another good A time - looks like currently you have a second A of around 2h30?  I would bet after a proper first nap (i.e. not a 30 minute nap) LO could manage another 3h easily.  Until you get that first A pushed out a bit more you will still need a catnap in the afternoon to get through to a sensible bedtime, but keep it short and to the minimum.  If you can get the second nap finishing at or close to 3pm skip the catnap altogether in favour of a 6pm bedtime. 

What do you think?

[BessieLondon]

Thank you, thank you thank you. It is so hard to see the woods for the trees sometimes!
I know that first nap is where things are going wrong but if I'm honest, I see him getting tired and am desperate for a nap myself so I put him down even though I shouldn't.
I'll try this and see how I go, thank you again. I'll come back and share how it went.

[jessmum46]

Hang in there, it is a bit of a rough transition but hopefully things will be much brighter on the other side x