Back to waking early - even with early-to-bed - help!

[finleyfoo]

My triumph was short-lived. I posted here that my son was waking early (between 5:00-5:30am) with a bedtime of 7:30pm. So I tried pushing up his bedtime earlier to get him more sleep. I started putting him down at 6:30pm (asleep by 6:45pm). For the first handful of nights, it worked! He slept until 6:00, 6:15, even 6:45am once. But the past few days, he has gone back to early wakings. Mostly 5:30am but even as early as 5:00am. He is still going to sleep between 6:40-7:00pm.

His napping is still the same, one nap from about 11:30 until 1:30 (sometimes a little shorter). This is at day care, so I don't have any control, although I use the same schedule at home on the weekends. I do think he needs a little more sleep even though with the earlier bedtime he is getting about 10.5 hours overnight (I think he needs 11 or a little more). His napping is about 1.5 to 2 hours per day, so it's not a huge amount of sleep total.

He does seem to be teething madly. Even though I can't see anything, he is constantly chewing on his hands/fingers.

These early mornings are killing me! They have been going on for about 6 weeks now. I just need him to sleep untli at least 6:00am. Any thoughts? Thanks.

[Harrisonsmummy]

From experience, I find that the early bedtimes are a useful tool to catch up on sleep, but once that has been accomplished you are left with an early wake-up again.

With 10.5 hrs of overnight sleep and 2 hr nap, I would start to push bedtime gradually back and hopefully the wake-up will follow. You may find that once he has settled into a routine he lengthens his overnight sleep, but personally I have found that my DS rarely sleeps longer than 10.5 hrs and in actual fact looking back never has done.

If your son has always been a "short" sleeper ie on the lower average levels then you may just have to accept that - if he has slept at great length in the past, it may just be a phase and he will get back to it!!!

No great words of wisdom I'm afraid, but just to let you know your son is in good company here!!

[imsmum]

As Harrison and Margot appear to be sleep twins I confirm that that has been my experience as well.

I don't know how much you can actually push the bedtime back given that the nap can't be pushed back as well, without risking some evening overtiredness and an even shorter night sleep.  I guess you will have to feel that out but 11:30 is awfully early for the one nap of the day so I suspect it will result in your day starting pretty early as well.  With such as early nap I doubt you will be able to get ds to sleep into 6 since on 10 or 10.5 hours night sleep your lo probably needs to go down for his nap about 6 hours after  wakeup.  I would try for a 7 to 5:30 night but if he's waking earlier than that you may need to move the bedtime a bit earlier to try to get in 10 to 10.5 hours of night sleep. 

Is there anyway you can get nursery to put him down even 15 minutes later?  Put him down last out of all the kids?  Even if you could get him napping at 12 you could probably move him to a 7:30 to 6 schedule.

After transitioning to one nap Margot did 10 hour nights and 1.5 hour naps for a few months before her night sleep actually started getting shorter!! But she has always taken less sleep than the average so I've just had to accept that this is all the sleep she requires. As long as your ds appears well rested that may be all the sleep he needs right now.

[finleyfoo]

Okay, so what I hear you guys saying is that ideally, he would be napping from 12-2 and not from 11:30-1:30 right. If his nap started a little later (12:00) then he would be more likely to sleep in until 6:00 am, then that way he could probably go to bed at 7:00. The way it is now, because he naps at 11:30, he is really tired by 6:00-6:30pm and then gets up earlier (5:30am). The truth is that his day care nap isn't always at 11:30, sometimes it is at 11:45 or even at 12:00. I haven't really noticed a difference in his wake up time even when the nap takes place at 12:00 and even when on the weekends we put him down at 12:00 instead, he doesn't sleep in. During the weekends, should we mimic the day care schedule and put him down at 11:30 as well or try to push it a little later (12:00)? Also, I've noticed that he only takes a 1.5 hour nap on the weekends, which still means waking up at 1:30. But he is so tired by 11:30am that he is so ready for a nap.

So should it be nap is 6 hours after waking and bedtime is 4.5 hours after waking from nap? So if awake at 6:00, nap at 12:00 and if awake from nap at 1:30, then bedtime at 6:00? Although that bedtime is really early and it means that he is sleeping 12 hours overnight, which is too long I think.

[imsmum]

You have to make the calculation based on your lo's average sleep times.  So if your lo usually does a 10.5 hour night and a 1.5 to 2 hour nap start with you ideal wakeup time of 6.  If average sleep is 10.5 that means a sleeptime of 7:30 so a bedtime around 7.    Margot usually went down to sleep for the night about 5.5 hours after her nap regardless of when her morning wake up was but I think that time is somewhat individual from child to child.  Is your lo similar in that there is usually a pretty consistent interval between when he wakes from nap and when he drops off at night?  You can use that to calculate the best nap time back from there.  So with Margot sleeptime was 7:30 which meant she needed to wake from her nap no earlier than 2 or be overtired at bedtime.  She would usually only nap for 1.5 hours so that meant a 12:30 nap regardless of am wakeup.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you probably can't get him to sleep more just to shift his sleep times to those that are more convenient.