5 month old waking earlier and earlier

[Rainbow91]

Hi I’m after a bit of help!

In the past three days my 5 month old has gone from having her usual four 30-45 minute naps a day to having three naps, two 1.5hour naps and then a 25/30 minute catnap which usually ends before 4.45pm then she’s in bed between 6.45pm - 7.15pm.

She’s a great sleeper during the night, goes down easy and self soothes (sucks her fingers as we went cold turkey with the dummy about a month ago). We do the dream feed at 10.30pm and she stays asleep right until the morning (I know I’m really lucky but this has only been since we came out of the sleep regression about a week and a half ago and up until that point we were up multiple times a night!).

However, for the past five days she’s woke up progressively earlier starting at 5.25am and this morning we’re now at 4.15am. I’ve been leaving her in in the next to me to see if she gets herself back to sleep. She lies there for 1 hour quietly sucking her fingers... I change her nappy after 30 - 45 mins of her lying awake to see if it helps and she’s elated to see me. I keep it quiet and act as if it’s still nighttime and pop her back down. I feel terrible leaving her lying there awake for an hour. I’ve also tried feeding her thinking it could be hunger, but she doesn’t take anything.

I’ve been told to not worry about it as she isn’t crying so she isn’t distressed, but I just want to figure out why she’s waking so early and if she’s lying there awake for an hour and dropping back off again (at 5.20am today) is she treating that as her first nap of the day?! And therefore is it re-enforcing the early wakings because she’s now getting too much day sleep? (If this is the case I’m not sure how to fix it because I really don’t want to get her up at 4.15am and try and stretch her awake time to first nap at 8.30/9am - I’d have no chance haha).

Feel like we’ve just cracked daytime napping and her ability to self settle during the night reducing night wakeups and then now we have extremely early wakeups!

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

It's summer so it's light much earlier, do you have black out curtains?
She could be teething?

If she isn't crying or distressed then leave her.You say she's only been sleeping through for a week and a half and for 5 of those days she is waking early but quite happy.If you slept through you'd never knowShe'll let you know if all is not well but until then let her be.

Try not to worry about it and just enjoy the time she is laying there quietly. I wouldn't treat it as a nap. I have a 2.5 year old who wakes this early except he shouts things like juice please, mummy I'm hungry etc 😁

Yeah we have blackout curtains so it’s still pretty dark. She is teething at the minute, but of a morning she isn’t in pain with it as she doesn’t cry

Could you try a blackout blind? Is there any noise that could have something to do with it like heating clicking on? Sometimes there just isn't an answer, my 2 are both early risers and I consider 5.30 get up a good day, they are 2 and 4. If its any consolation you do get used to it.