11 Month Old FINALLY Sleeping Through but Now up at 5:30 Advice on This Stage

Your post is my life! I have an 11 month old breastfed baby who just started sleeping through the night, 7pm-5:30 or 6am. I know it's early in the morning. And I know every mom has their own opinion, so here's my two cents. I would not push the bedtime later and I would not give up the morning nap. When my first born went through this stage, we experienced the same thing...about 10 1/2 hours sleep at night with two 1 1/2-2 hour naps. When you add it all up that's 14 hours (+/-) which is great for an 11 month old! I advise you keep the morning nap until baby is consistently 7pm-7am (or 12 hours at night) and not sleeping during one of the times you put him down for a nap. (For my son this was about 14 months.) At that point, adjust slowly to one afternoon nap after lunch. Down the road if/when that nap gets to be long (like 4 or 4:30pm), then adjust bedtime a bit later. Neither of my boys have ever slept in because we put them to bed later, so that strategy results in less sleep in our house! One suggestion to try to get more sleep from him now is to keep the nap times close to what they were before. Try 8:30 instead of 8 (mentally this helps me so that we're not done with the first nap at 9:30!!) to stretch the sleeping time in the morning to 10 or even 10:30. Then try to get him to sleep closer to 1:00...My last piece of advice is to make the first 1/2 hour to hour of awake time in the morning as restful as possible. I nurse my little guy and then we read a bunch of stories (he's still in his pj's and sleepsack) with a little light on. Once big brother's up we do breakfast/solid foods/active time/fresh air outside, etc before morning nap. This is just a transitional phase. I know you must be so proud of him he's sleeping all the way through!! Good luck!

Well, I usually agree that putting babies to bed early leads to better and longer sleeping but. . . . I think in this case 6:30 pm is awfully early. But either way, welcome to Motherhood, 5:30 is not too bad- its a pretty common wake up time, especially for that age. Keep the two naps for awhile, and don't worry because the time will go by really fast and soon he'll be walking into your room in the middle of the night. :)

Sounds like just a change in sleeping habits. Try keeping his room as dark as possible in the morning- use dark curtains.
Putting them up in my sons room really helped a lot. He'll wake up around 4 or 5am, and then go back to sleep till 8:30.
Summer hours and light can trick them into thinking its later than it really is!

You could slowly (10-15 min per evening) push his bedtime back more toward 7:30-7:45.
Is something in the house (sunlight peeking thru curtain, furnace/ac clicking on) waking him, do you think? White noise or soft music, and/or room darkening shades might help.

He may be ready to transition to one nap a day. I would suggest you try putting him down shortly after lunch for one nap and see if the routine changes. It may mean a few 'cranky' days for him, but you already seem to be having that. In my own opinion, getting several hours of naptime for one nap a day rather than two or three short naps makes it easier for the parent, and probably is better for the child. Your son is near the age where most daycares make the transition from napping on demand to the once a day nap.

You may need to shift his bedtime a little. Try putting him down later. While this was at a younger age for my son, we had a later bedtime, until he was sleeping longer and longer and we gradually moved it about 15 minutes at a time until he was sleeping the full 12 hours. I would also decide if you are either feeding him at night or not. Either way, you need to be consistent when he wakes up. Yes, he will cry the first few times, and you need to decide if that is something you want to do or not. My son cried about 3 nights, and then he just put himself back down.

The 5:30 thing is a phase. Just when I get used to one of my kids nighttime or wakeup routines, it changes.

When my 18 month old wakes up early, this is what I do (I am not a morning person at all and dread getting up, but.....that's the way it is)

Program my coffee maker to come on automatically the next morning.
Get up with my son, turn on some TV, nurse
Make a cup of coffee and get my son some cereal to snack on
Then I enjoy my cup (s) of coffee, watch some TV and my son snacks and plays quietly by himself
I really enjoy those mornings because it gives me a chance to wake up, relax, think about my upcoming day, or whatever....then my almost 4 year old wakes up and the day gets crazy

Hope this helps a little. I was really tired the first week he started getting up too early. Then I started to look forward to it and I think my body finally adjusted (although I don't think you are truly ever rested with kids)