Is the room dark? That's pretty much bang on sunrise here.
Thats what I thought but the room is completely dark. We've got one of those fitted blackout screens into the window so its as dark as anything in there. I did wonder if light was sneaking in somewhere but checked it the other morning and it is dark as dark can be in there.
We actually increased nap times. We had read somewhere that reducing nap times actually makes them over tired resulting in putting the rest of the sleep routine out of whack. It is just trial and error until you find the sweet spot but it changes as they grow.
Also get a black out blind and slap that on the window if you don't already have one.
When our son doesn't have a nap at nursery through the day, We usually have a restless night or an early wake up. However, When we have him in a regular nap routine, We generally get a consistent peaceful night.
Yeh there seems to be conflicting advice everywhere tbh, some say sleep breeds sleep and to let them sleep longer in the day, some say cap the nap to build sleep resistance.
We're using that Huckleberry app at for sleep tracking and its been mega helpful in knowing when shes ready to nap and we've never had a problem getting her to go down.
I think she may be at the age now though where we try and stick to set nap/bed times/lengths regardless of what time she wakes up.
This morning she woke up even earlier at like 4:37am - so the shortened naps of yesterday didn't really do anything, although she did sleep for longer overall actually as i put her to bed earlier. I guess the next logical step would be to keep the shorter naps and make bed time later to see if she keeps that length of total night sleep - but other than that i'm out of ideas.
The only other thought I had was if its something stupid like the birds that are waking her up as they usually all squark and scream at sunrise and it can sound quite jungly outside for want of a better word. We've got white noise in her room too at a decent level.
So many things to consider!
Good luck.
My boy has always been an early bird, routine is key, my boy always went to bed at 7 and always woke around 5, sometimes 6. Shifting sleep times never helps, all it does is increase the child's tiredness
It's easier to change your sleep pattern, go to bed and hour earlier so you can wake up and hour earlier.
Alternatively just ignore her till your ready to wake up, it will be tough though.
Daytime naps should be reduced over time, think my boy was having 1 hour naps at 9 months
Blackout blinds will help this time of year also, we had a travel tomee tippee one worked really well with the suction cups.
Yeh were in the process of naturally shortening her naps.
I can live with a 5am wake up but my wife really struggles with that early. We already generally go to bed around 8:30/9ish in light of how early we end up getting up.
We did the whole ignoring her if she wakes to get through the night wakes, but this final early morning wake is a real buzz kill. I.e. this morning i'd tried it and let her whinge for about 40 mins but she wasnt really giving up, so went in and she'd done a massive poo which was probs the issue all along.
Thanks for the advice guys. And we continue.....