6mo early morning awakening.. what to do???

[SaraMamma]

Hi everyone,

my LO is 6mo and has been folowing the EASY routine since birth pretty much.

He's been sleeping through the night since 12wo (when we introduced the dream feed) and generally would sleep until 7am (sometimes I even woke him up...).

It's been a few weeks now though that in the morning he wakes up early! I'm not sure what time, because I see him when my alarm goes off at around 6:20am, and many times he's already awake (we have a camera in his room so I can check on him if he cries).
He is great because he doesn't cry nor calls for attention, he simply stays in his bed "talking" to his mobile or rolling... But then he gets tired early and I feel bad because he should spend his awake time playing rather than in his room... 

He has a pretty good routine, with 3 solid meals per day (he started solids a bit over 1month ago, at 5mo), 4 milk feeds + dreamfeed.
He also has 2x 1.5-2h naps and a cat nap each day, and he goes to bed at around 7:15-7:30.

Our routine looks like this:

WU- 6am?!?!?

7am BF
8:15am solid breakfast
9am 1.5-2hour nap (unless he woke up too early and I see he's too tired, then I put him to bed 10' after solids, which I move earlier)

11am bottle
12:15 solid lunch
1pm 1.5-2hour nap

3pm bottle (170-200ml)
4:45pm 30'-45' catnap

5:30pm solid dinner
6:30pm bottle (150-200ml)

7:15-7:30pm BT

10:20pm BF (DF)

Any idea why he's waking up so early? And better.. any suggestions for what I could do to help him sleep a bit more, at least till 6:30am...?

He is not teething and does not wake up hungry, so not sure what to do... 

[becj86]

He's probably ready to drop the catnap and move to 2 naps. It looks like he's trying to achieve that 3hr A time by waking earlier, so if you push that first nap later by 15min every few days until its at 10am, you should start to see him waking closer to 7am.

Suggested routine at 6 months is something like:
7 - WU, milk
8 - solids
10 - nap
12 - WU, milk
1 - lunch
3 - nap
5 - WU, milk
6:30 - milk
7:30 - asleep in bed

[SaraMamma]

Hi becj86,

thanks. I thought the catnap could be involved...

However, in your suggested routine (for which I thank you!), there is no solid dinner included...

I obviously want to keep his 3 solid meals each day, so how would you suggest I could organise it?

Thank you so much for any advice you can give me!

[becj86]

Just put the third solid meal at say, 6pm and move the BT milk a little later (or do a big bottle at WU and a solids meal then just don't do BT milk but keep your DF). Alternately, you could do solids on WU from nap #2 and milk at BT. 3 solid meals is a lot at 6 months - most babies only get to a third solid meal at closer to 8-9 months. Milk is still the most important and energy dense food he is taking at this age, so prioritising milk over solids is reasonable if you can't fit both.