8mo wakes up at 5:30AM regardless of bed time

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theartseed

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Bedtime is between 6 and 7. He's asleep no more than 30min after being put in his crib. He always wakes up a 5:30. He needs to be changed/fed, but will need a nap nor more than an hour later. One night we didn't get him down until 8 and I thought he would sleep until 630 or later. Nope, up at 5:30.

It isn't time change related b/c he was still waking up at 5:30 before the time change. So I assumed something was waking him up in his room. I guessed it was our thermostat b/c I have it set to bring the temp from 65 to 70 by 6AM, so I thought that could be disturbing him. I pushed that back an hour and he still wakes up at 5:30.

If he was waking up and was ready for the day, I'd leave it alone and let him go. But since he needs a nap an hour after getting up, I'd like to see if there are any ideas out there for getting him to sleep an extra hour or so...or if this is just life for now.
 
@theartseed Dear god. Your child sleeps for 10-11 hours with a predictable schedule?

I need to go think about my life. Preferably in a corner. Preferably with a bottle of wine.
 
@alataea As a first time dad of an 8mo who sleeps maybe 6 hours of broken sleep a night on a good night, this feels like a humble brag. But then again, I'm just tired man.
 
@earthenjars I feel that. Every baby is different. But I will say night feed weaning and sticking to a reliable nightly routine has helped us tremendously along the way. We weaned off the night feeding EARLY and it was a total game changer. Our LO has had some ups and downs since then but overall we can consistently expect him to go down at night and sleep at least 10 hours with minimal wakings.
 
@theartseed If he's regularly sleeping through from 7 to 5:30 at that age you're already pretty lucky to be honest. This is your life for now, but it's a phase, it will change again pretty soon, like most things at that age change a lot.
 
@theartseed Our daughter did something similar for a few weeks around the same age. Up at 5 or 5:30, early nap, then normal for the rest of the day.

After a few weeks she ended up just wanting an early morning change and would go back down, and then started sleeping through it again, and now she is at a "normal" wake up time of around 7.

All I can say is just keep up with the normal schedule and bed-times. This is probably just one of those periods where you just have to push through and it gets better after a month or two.
 
@dccobbs Agreed this usually happens in phases, although 8 months is also a time when kids often transition down to 2 naps during the day. If OP still is doing 3 it may lead to him needing less sleep at night to compensate.
 
@theartseed My son is now 1.5 years old and has always been awake at 5 am. It's just when he wakes up.

It's not too terrible because I wake up at 5am for work anyway and he'll just chill with me while I drink my coffee.
 
@theartseed If his diaper is soaked and waking him up - try using diapers a size up for night. I’ve found the nighttime extra absorbent diapers are garbage but a size up does wonders. Our son was wetting through and it’d wake him up.

Otherwise - how long are you leaving him in the crib after waking up? Our guideline is ~11-12 hours of time in their crib so if he goes down at 7:15pm we’re not getting him until 6:30am unless he’s totally melting down / screaming crying for at least 15 minutes in a row.

I surprised myself with how often he’d go back to bed. My son just turned 1 year old and this has been our rule since around 4 months.
 
@lichtstatt If only I could get my wife to wait 15mins.

We usually get him about 15-20min after he wakes up. He usually just sits in his crib making little noises, but around the 15-20min mark he done being peaceful.
 
@theartseed So for what it’s worth she’s teaching him to scream when he wants attention. That first scale well over time lol. We wait 15 minutes after he gets upset, so if he’s just making noises to himself but calm timer hasn’t started yet.
 
@theartseed We have been dealing with the same issue with our 9mo.

Part of what I've been seeing elsewhere online is to not let them have that nap after just an hour. Maintain a regular wake window, and ideally don't let them nap until the time that they "should" be napping normally. So for us, if we said 6AM wake up is normal/tolerable, and his wake window is 9AM, we should be trying to drag that wake window until 9 so that they aren't able to "steal" extra sleep from the early nap. I'm probably describing it poorly, but that was the essence of what we've been trying with him.

That said, if he wakes up before 5:30, my partner has been going in and nursing him and putting him back down to sleep. Typically, he sleeps until about 7 or 7:30 after that feed so he may just be in a growth spurt and need more food for now. We tried doing a very large bottle at bedtime to see if that helped, but it didn't really have much of an effect.

At this point, if he wakes up at 5:30 we leave him in the crib and watch the monitor until 6AM, at which point one of us gets up with him and starts the day. He's usually cranky, since he hasn't had enough sleep so it's a bit of a tough morning some days, but we have been able to reduce the frequency that this is happening at least.
 
@theartseed Time change did this to my kid, I know that you say that isn't your kids issue, but what worked for me is to just leave his ass in bed for another hour or so. He doesn't scream bloody murder unless he needs changed, so I change him, put him back in bed and he freaks for a second and then goes back to his normal "I'm awake" quiet babbling or he falls back to sleep.

Lately it's been monstrous shits that wake him up early. I'm not a morning person and that is a hard thing to deal with an hour or two before you are supposed to be awake.
 
@theartseed We thought our oldest would grow out of waking at 5am. He started around 8 months.

He's 6 and still wakes up at 5am, ready for the day. Doesn't matter what time he goes to bed.
 
@theartseed My son is 15 months and has the same schedule. He's eager to be in bed by 6:30 and I get up with him at 5:30 when I get up for work anyway. He doesn't wake up even once during the night. It's glorious so hopefully it lasts a long time
 
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