Help! 13 month old early rising for 2 months now!

[deemom]

I was wondering if anyone could help me w/ my 13 month old early riser.  It’s been going on for 2 months now.  I usually wake him up from his AM and PM naps, so that his naps don’t go over 2.5 hours during the day.  I figured less naps would let him sleep later in the mornings but it’s not working…I tried putting him down earlier before 8:30 am but then he would wake up even earlier!!   Not sure how I would do wake to sleep when he wake time differs each morning. 

Here is his schedule.

5:30-6:30 Wakes at any time during this interval.  I try to pick him up only at 6:30, letting him cry.  Drinks his milk

7am Breakfast
9/9:30  Nap
10:30/11 Wake (I wake him after 1.5 hours )  and milk
11:30/12  Lunch

1:30/2  Nap for one hour only ( Again, I wake him after one hour)

2:00  Snack

5:00  Dinner

7:00 Snack/ Milk
8:30  in bed[/size]

[Layla]

Hi there & welcome !!!

I would make the following suggestions:
* make bedtime much earlier. Start with 6.30pm to give him the chance to catch up on some sleep. He should really be doing at least 10.5-11hrs at night & at the moment he's only getting 9 hrs at night so he's probably very overtired.

* don't offer the morning nap any earlier than 9-9.30am

* wake him up 45mins into the morning nap & offer the afternoon nap about 3.5hrs later

* let him have 1.5hrs in the pm

* make bedtime 3.5-4hrs from the pm nap

So... your day would look something like this:

wakes (be it 5.30am)
9:30-10:15 - morning nap
1:45-3:15 - afternoon nap
6:45-7pm - bedtime

this is all related to transitioning to 1 nap. ALot of babies are capable of doing this nice long morning nap but then it affects their morning wake up time. So by waking him up from the morning nap earlier, he should add those hours onto night sleep & his afternoon nap will hopefully increase at the same time. Might take about a week to see how you are going but in the meantime I would definitely bump up the bedtime because he should be getting more sleep at night. 99.9% of the time, a later bedtime leads to earlier wakings.

hth
Layla

[deemom]

Thanks Layla,
I'll try this...he has been really cranky when he gets up probably b/c he doesn't get enough sleep.
This morning he drank a whole lot of water and then went back to sleep till 7:30 after waking at 5:45.
I thought it was too early to transition to one nap, but i guess it's time. 

[Layla]

Well he might not yet be ready for 1 nap but usually a long morning nap can interfere with the wake up hour, thats why I suggested you cut the morning nap to see if the hours will add to night sleep.