5:30am

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining. Compared to many people with five month old babies we get a lot of sleep. In fact, I've never really felt all that sleep deprived after the first few days. It's just that we have started having a bit of a problem. For the last few weeks Lily has been regularly waking up around 5:30am. She eats and goes right back to sleep, but still...

This is really the worst possible time for her to wake up. It's just before I have to get up for work, and just late enough that it doesn't make sense for me to feed her again before I go to work at 7:20. This means that her entire eating and sleeping schedule for the day is off a bit, and I have to worry about her having enough milk for a potential third feeding.

There have been a few days when she sleeps until 7, which is optimal. I just can't figure out how to get her to regularly sleep until 7. I've tried putting her to bed later, but it doesn't seem to correlate with her sleeping later. Right now her regular afternoon schedule includes a nap around 5:30 that last anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half (I can't find a correlation with that sleep and wake up time either), the a meal, then play time until 8:30 or 9ish (or sometimes 10) and then another meal and sleep. She goes to sleep really well and sleeps good until around 5:30.

I've tried adjusting the feedings, the afternoon nap, and the bed time, but can't seem to figure out what works. Part of me is considering dropping the afternoon nap and making 7pm bedtime, with the theory that I'd rather deal with a 3am feeding than a 5:30 one, but I'm not sure it would help and putting her to bed that early really limits our family together time and makes most of it be with a grouchy sleepy baby.

I'm just not sure what to do...any suggestions?