My son is a week shy of 11 months and I need help fixing early wakes (or coming to terms with this as normal?). For some context he’s in his crib in his room.
Prior to the last week, he was going to sleep around 7, and would usually wake a couple times to nurse (which I’m fine keeping and don’t plan to nightwean any time soon). However, he would often wake at 3, 4, and 5, and would wake upon transfer at any of those. He also started having split nights.
So for the last week we’ve been doing an 8pm bedtime. He’s waking around 12:30 and 4 to nurse, but he’s still waking up at 5:30 ready to party.
His schedule is then usually 3.5/3.5/4 (we try to keep nap time at 9 at the earliest so as to not reinforce the early wake)
Two things:
- His morning nap is always consistent, but his afternoon nap is not. My SIL watches him during the day, and between preschool pickup and her older kids getting home from school, that nap is always a struggle. So sometime his last wake window is 5 hours, others it’s 4
- We have blackout curtains, but not blackout blinds. So morning light is definitely getting into his room. Could it be as simple as the light waking him up/his circadian rhythm? I just don’t want to waste money getting them if he’s just an early riser.
He’s usually pretty happy throughout the day and evening, but he’s only been getting like 9ish hours of overnight sleep, and 2.5-3 hours of naps so I’m worried I’m doing something wrong.