Really frustrated with wake-up time - HELP!

[GraysonsMommy]

Grayson (17 weeks old tomorrow) is waking too early in the morning and it's really starting to become a problem, because the earlier he wakes, the earlier that night he wants to go to sleep, creating the same problem each morning again.  He first woke at 4:30am today and after putting him back to sleep, he woke again at 5am and played in his crib until I got him at 6:15.  The problem with this is that he needs his first nap already between 6:30 and 7am!  That pushes his whole (4 Hour EASY) schedule up so far that he ends the day with way too much awake time, recreating the overtired syndrome for night sleep!  If I give in and let him sleep earlier, he wakes up even earlier the next morning! It's a vicious cycle!  Argghhh! I was going to try to push this problem off until I could get him to sleep better, but now I don't really know what to do....and then daylight savings time is going to happen and make it even worse.  I'm really not sure what to do, any advice?!

Here is a sample of our schedule.  It fluctuates by 30 minutes either way, most of the time.

E - 6.30
A
S - 8-10

E - 10.30
A
S - 12-2

E - 2.30
A
S - 3.30-4.15

E - 5.30 (we start cluster feeding here)
A
E - 7-7.30
S - 7.15-7.30

DF - 11 or 11.30

TIA for any advice, I'm desparate.  It's stressing me out all day now, because if he takes a shorter nap or needs to go to sleep sooner than usual, I stress that he is going to have too much awake time in the evening, causing him to want to sleep earlier or become overtired....Please help!

Jessica

[Gigismom]

i only wish i could help you!!  at 6 months, our dd started doing that too.  currently her wake up is around 5:45.  i cannot extend this for the life of me.  i tried everything including:

wake to sleep
less naps
more naps
keeping her up later at night
putting her down earlier at night
giving a feed at 5:45 and putting back down

the only thing we had partial success with was keeping her up later at night.  this sometiems helps her sleep til 6:30.  it's worth trying various things, but ultimately if your child is waking up happy, he probly isn't going back to sleep.  we have just decided to roll with it.  it is hard, but i drink lots of coffee now!!

one thing i read is that even if your child wakes early, you should not allow them to take an earlier nap.  keep the original nap time even if the chld is really tired.  that is what we do with gianna.  even though she wakes early, her first nap never comes sooner that 9:00.  this helps the rest of her day not be too thrown off.   just be careful he doesn't get too overtired.

by the way, he is really cute!!!

[GraysonsMommy]

Thanks Lindsey!  That is what I did today actually, I kept his first nap at 8am even though he woke at 5-5:30.  He went down well, surprisingly, and stayed down for an hour and fourty five minutes!  So I guess the first nap of the day is probably the one to keep consistant, it seems to be the easiest to get him down too.  Food idea and thanks for the advice!  As long as he starts sleeping though the night, I won't mind the early wake up, but with his other wakings at night, I'm desparate!

Jessica