16 mos wakes up crying

[vuhoo]

My son has been sleeping through the night since he was 5 mos old.  His naps have been consistent.  For the past couple of weeks, he wakes up crying.  The crying would be brief and if I leave him alone, he finds his way back to sleep.  Prior to this, he wakes up jabbering in a good mood.  When this occurs, I know he is well rested.  When he wakes up crying, I know he's still tired.  He still sleeps through the night but instead of waking up at 7am like he used to (happy and jabbering), he's now waking up at 5am crying, falls back asleep and wakes up at 6am crying.  During his naps, he would wake up at least once crying and falls back asleep.  In other posts I've read, there was some thought of possible ear infection.  If my DS does have an ear infection, would he be able to fall back asleep after waking up crying?  He has another tooth coming in so it's possible that he's teething.  What baffles me is that he wakes up every morning at 5am crying, like clockwork.  My question is why is he waking up crying?  His schedule hasn't changed at all.  Could this be a phase at his age?  His routine is like this:

- 5am wake / cry / falls asleep
- 6am wake / cry
- 6:30am - breakfast
- 9:30am - morning snack
- 11:30am - lunch
- 12:00pm - nap (1hr - 1.5hrs)
- 3pm - afternoon snack
- 5pm - dinner
- 7:30pm - bedtime routine
- 8pm - bedtime

[binxyboo]

It looks as though he may be overtired at bedtime if he is not napping well in the day. I would try for an earlier bedtime to help improve the early morning wakings. At 16 months, our routine looks like this:
\
7-8: wake
12-2or 3: nap
7-8: bed

If he is only napping for such a short time, you should aim to have him in bed by 7, I would say. When he starts to sleep better at night, hopefully that nap will lengthen a bit too. When did you switch to one nap?

[vuhoo]

We switched him to one nap at 12mos.  I know that is early but he wouldn't nap twice a day.  He would cry and cry when I put him down.  I then determined he wasn't tired enough.  Once we switched him to one nap, he slept great...until now.

[Colin Macs Mom]

Just going to pop this over to toddler sleep.

[mari]

I would think that he is over tired at bedtime.  Could you try bedtime a little earlier? As Michelle said, as he only has a short nap he is probably shattered by 8pm and would probably benefit from going to bed at 7pm and his nap might get a little longer in the daytime when he settles.