suddenly early waking- any experience?

[hellymelly]

My dd is seven (year 2), she has always woken at about 7.30-8, even as a small baby she wasn't a madly early waker. A month or so back she suddenly started waking very early in the morning, and is now waking every day at about 5.30, sixish on a good day or if like last night, she's had a late night. She's usually asleep at about 7.30 on a school night, although sometimes 8.
She is rather anxiety prone and stressy but even through very stressed times hasn't woken like this. She says she needs a wee, but isn't weeing a lot during the day or anything. Initially she was also waking worried about feeling sick (hungry I think) as she's had a few tummy bugs recently and is now quite scared of getting another. Any thoughts? Its killing me off being woken so early as I've only had a few months of unbroke nights since she was born, dd2 has been a terrible sleeper.

my ds (8 y/r) goes through stages like this. he has a habit of telling me when he is going to the toilet etc so i am woken up to. i just say ok then go back to bed and go back to sleep which he does. it does take a couple of days but then it stops. They get into a routine of getting up earlier even when they dont really want to because that's what they do. you need to get her back into the routine of sleeping longer

yes, but I don't know how to do that - She can't ever go back to sleep and so is pretty exhausted. She is very thin which maybe is a factor ?(waking because she needs to eat).

with my ds i dont get up when he gets up early, i just tell him to go back to bed and turn over to go back to sleep, i dont make a deal of it or anything. is she getting up because she IS hungry or because she has got into the habit and THINKS she is hungy. either way sending her back to bed for another hour wont hurt - if anything she will eat more at breakfast.

I think she is hungry, I do give her oatcakes tight before bed to try and help that. She still co-sleeps with me which is why its denting my sleep so much, DH can sleep through anything but I can't go back to sleep while she's awake for some reason. My main concern though is how overtired she will get , she is exhausted by Friday and really could do with a bit more sleep.