Early Waking 11 mth Old

[daxtonsmum]

Hi, this is my first post.

My 11 1/2 month old son is a generally good sleeper and napper; however, he has been waking up between 5 AM and 5:30 AM for the last 3 weeks.  And the time change is only going to make it worse!

He goes to sleep at 6:30P and takes two naps in the day, each for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Any suggestions on how to get him to sleep longer in the early AM?

He wakes up screaming and seems to be quite hungry (drinks about 6 ozs of formula).  On the rare occasion he will go back to sleep for about an hour - but this is very rare!

Would love your thoughts!!!!

Daxton's Mum

[Katet]

For an 11mo going from 6.30pm to 5 or 5.30am is very reasonable. So my suggestion if you want him to sleep later would be a later bed time. Some babies are able to sleep 12 hours at night but others (like my 2yo) rarely do more than about 10-11 hours. Maybe if you transitioned to 1 nap/day or cut back on the length of one of them you may get longer night sleep. but my thought is if he is waking up hungry then the only thing would be later evening meal to delay the hunger, but that doesn't always guarantee as there seems (to me) to be something evolutionary about babies/toddlers waking at 5amish

[GG]

I agree with Kate... not all babies sleep 12 hours at a time.  Many sleep 10-11.  Try putting him to bed an hour later - but do it slowly!  Add 15 minutes for 3-4 days (to give him some time to get used to it), then add another 15 minutes for 3-4 days... so forth until it's an hour.  It should take approximately 2 weeks.  That way, you can give him food a bit later to keep him satisfied a bit longer through the night and he will (we hope) get used to waking up later.