Sleeping well but at the the wrong time

[nick's mum]

My 8 1/2 mth old sleeps well but about 1 1/2-2 hours too early. He has 2-3 1-2hour sleeps during the day and can put himself to sleep. He sleeps 10-11 hours at night. :) My problem is that he always wakes up at 4-5am! :eek: Sometimes he's exhausted and falls asleep at 5pm! He just crashes and sleeps through until 4am. If I manage to keep him up until 7pm he is still awake at 4-5am and often then also wakes during the night once as well! :confused: Nothing I do seems to change his body clock. My Nana has suggested feeding him later but he's a really good eater and to hold him out too long I would have a very upset boy. I will try and move his feeds back 15mins at a time and see how we go, but I would really love some other suggestions. I'd really like to return to the adult world and stay up later than about 8pm! :rolleyes:

[Kat]

Gee I'm not sure I'm not just jealous! My bubba used to get up at 4:30am after going to bed around 7pm.

We tried to 'adjust' her sleeping.

Now we are lucky if she's in bed by 8pm (bad night still up at 10pm) and she wakes up usually at 10pm, 1am, 3:30am, and 5:30am.

I'd stick with the 11 hours all at once.

You could always have a daytime nap to stay up later.

Kat

[Chickadee]

Slowly shifting his last feed and bedtime in 10 or 15 min increments, as you've planned, is the most common solution I've heard for this. You could also try shifting his afternoon nap back a little bit too, so that gradually his entire day shifts more towards a "normal" wake up and bedtime. I don't think it's a process you can rush though.

Ever tried waking him up after his 5pm crash? I'm not sure I'd recommend this but I was wondering what would happen if you woke him up at say 6 or 7, fed and kept him up a little and then put him back to bed for the night. I know we've had some days like this when Chloe was transitioning from 3 naps to 2, where she'd take a very late 3rd nap and I'd end up waking her just to get her to eat something (i'm a bit paranoid about her eating enough :) ) It might backfire and leave you with a very grumpy tired boy though.