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My son will be 6 months old next week and we've been struggling with early morning waking (5:30am) for almost the last 12 weeks.  When this first started, he was taking 3 naps a day, although the third nap was dicy and inconsistent (30min-2 hours) with a bedtime around 8pm.  About 8 weeks ago, it was suggested his bedtime was too late, so we dropped the 3rd nap in favor of an early bedtime (6pm).  Prior the bedtime switch, he had been waking at 5:30 and immediately breaking into hysterical tears and would cry until we "rescued" him from his crib, which sometimes wasn't until 7am.  With the bedtime switch he's waking up happy for the first 15 minutes or so until the tears start.  Now I have to confess that my son is a tummy sleeper and has taken to rolling onto his back at 5:30 and expects to be flipped to prevent crying.  I think that now may be the time to start CIO for the early waking, which now seems partially habitual and partially due to the rolling, but wanted to see if anyone had any other thoughts.  We've darkened the room, added white noise, reintroduced the dream feed, ect.

In addition to the early waking, I'm finding that naptime is a bit compromised.  If morning nap is good (2hrs), then afternoon nap is bad (45min-1 1/2 hrs) or vis versa.

My son is a happy baby, so it's sometimes hard to tell how tired he is, but I'm concerned that he's contiunally overtired at this point which is why he's sleeping so poorly.  Any tips out there?  He's our third child and I think the whole family would love for him to sleep a bit later in the mornings!