Will shortening his naps means he sleeps later in the morning?

DS is getting up awfully early. Today it was 5:30am, and that makes for a VERY long day.

On the plus side, he will have monster-sized naps, between 2-3 hours. This isn't so bad if I'm home with him because I can have a little nap then too, but with working 3 dpw, its not such a good thing.

So we were thinking of not letting him sleep beyond 2 hours during the day, in the hopes he will then sleep longer at night. But I was just talking to a friend, and she said she tried this and it made no difference whatsoever.

Has this plan worked for anyone? Is it worth trying?

Hey Amber,

With Ben.. who is 3 years old.. he wakes up at about 730-8 has a nap at 12-1 for 2 hours.. has play, food, dinner bath.. play and then to bed at 730-8pm

Same as DD she is now 18th months.. does the same pattern, but could do with a morning nap at times.

Good luck

What time does he go to bed at night? I find DD needs about 14 hours sleep in a 24 period, so she usually sleeps 2 hours between 11:30am and 1:30pm and then sleeps 7-7 with a coupla feeds in between.

I find the later DD goes to bed, the earlier she is up. Weird I know.

Anyway, you could try and tweak the nap times/duration and see what happens? Also, how dark/quiet is it at 5:30am? Are there trucks or traffic, or birds or lights? I find DD always sleeps longer in our room where there are less birds (outside I mean...we don't keep birds in the house lol)

HTH

I haven't heard of many people who have had success with shortening their day sleeps so they sleep longer during the night. Sorry.
Like Arcadia has said, how dark is his room at 5.30am? How noisy?
Emily sleeps 12-13 hours at night, and 4 hours during the day. Even if she was to be woken earlier during her day sleep, she will still only sleep max 13 hours overnight.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing unusual (noise, lights etc) that wakes Peter up at the ungodly hours he is waking. He's just....up.

He goes to bed between 7:30-8:00pm, so if he's up at 5:30, its only like 10 hours sleep- I think he needs about 11 overnight because if he's up early he is so, so, so grumpy by 11am and is asking for bed again from about 9am! Arcadia its funny you should say the later your put your LO to bed, the earlier they get up- I swear thats true here as well. Of course we have tried keeping DS up later, but it made no difference whatsoever...!

Well, we might give it a try and see how it goes. I don't hold out much hope, but I suppose its worth a try. Which means I need to go and wake the beast....

We actually found with DD if she started waking up earlier in the morning, and having shorter sleeps in the morning, we would keep her up longer, even half an hour, it can be hardwork for that half an hour, but we found that she would sleep in longer, it was like the morning slept set her routine for overnight, rather then the length of the day nap.

HTH's it is so tricky when the switch theing up, just as we get used to them!! He isn't getting cold is he? We put DD back into a sleeping bag as she was waking up overnight, and last night she slept through to 6:30am for the first time in a couple of weeks
Take care and hopefully you get some more sleep ins soon!!

Hey Amber, I know the sleep school lady told a friend of mine to not get them out of cot until 630 MINIMUM.. so put baby to bed as you do at 730-8 and then, dont get him until 630.. she said they learn very quickly the habbit!

didi, did they say what to do with them in the meantime? DS gets to crying very hard pretty quickly if we don't get him up. Maybe I can stretch him out a bit more each day...

I tried to get him up after 2 hours today, but he ended up sleeping for 3 hours :redface:
I tried opening his door and making lots of noise and gently poking him, but he just wouldn't wake up! I felt too mean to 'shake' him awake. We might be in for another early morning....

Nup, made no difference here. Jazz just gets up early... mostly with the sun, I guess it's who she is. She is sleeping later, the other day it was until 6.30am WOOHOO! We had a great sleep-in!

Also, if he's sleeping a decent amount at night then I don't see why he would NEED to sleep longer, KWIM. 10 hours is decent, does he really NEED to sleep longer? I know he seems tired in the morning but I don't think has much to do with how much sleep he needs at night, more to do with how much time he is able to be awake for.

another early riser here.... late night, early night, long nap, short nap, she is pretty much up at 5.00 or 5.30 everyday. When DLS first changed over it was 4.30 :o and it wasn't the sun, it was pitch dark when she was waking up :shakehead:
I usually put one of her shows on TV for half an hour so i can snooze in bed until the halfway decent hour of 6.00am... but it's not always successful. she keeps running in and asking for 'noonoos' (BB) or 'toast'

Yup she said to leave them in their cot until 630, even if they are upset and crying etc, especially if at 10-11am they are well tired and not wanting to go back to bed.. they need more then 10 hours sleep. She actually stayed at my friends )lots of money) for 2 days and went through it all with her.

This is from the Tweedle Sleep Centre Professional. She said, as baby then learns, "If i open my eyes and yell out mum will come get me" whereas if you leave them there.. for 40min-1 hour etc.. They learn to self settle themselves back to sleep so they dont wake up earlier without enough sleep. And then wake up content and not needing to go back to sleep in 2 hours.