HELP! My 10 month old wants to get up at 4:30 am!

My daughter is a pretty decent sleeper, most nights waking up only once (maybe twice) to nurse, then she goes right back to sleep. The problem is that after that late wakeup (generally around 4:30 or 5), she'll go back to sleep for thirty minutes and be up again. The only way to get her back to sleep then is to put her in bed with me and let her nurse the rest of the morning until 6:30 or 7. While these snuggles are quite wonderful, I'd like to actually, you know, get up and enjoy a cup of coffee in peace before the kids get up. It does get light here before 5 a.m. so I wondered if that was to blame. I hung dark curtains over her window for a week but she was still up early every day. She goes to bed at 7 pm so I don't think she's truly ready to be up for the day at 5. Especially when she'll go back to sleep in my bed for another hour and a half, or sometimes two. She gets between 2.5-3 hours of naps in per day. Any suggestions or do I need to suck it up?

Sara

Sara,

Early rising, which I define as waking up for the day before 6am, is one of the most common (and most frustrating) problems that I hear about as a sleep coach.  Thankfully, there are ways to stop it, so you do not need to "just suck it up!" 

To answer from a general perspective, here are the main causes of early rising.  See if any of them sound like they would apply to your situation.  Unfortunately, it only takes one in a lot of cases!

1.  Too late of a bedtime
2.  Putting your child to bed asleep (or too drowsy)
3.  Nap deprivation
4.  Too long of an awake period between the last nap of the day and bedtime

To your specific situation, she's 10, so she should be getting 11 hours at night and 3 or a little more during the day, spread over 2 naps.  It sounds like you're doing pretty well on that front, so #3 isn't sounding likely to me.  7pm is a perfectly reasonable bedtime, so that eliminates #1.  As for #4, she can probably go about 3.5 hours between her last nap and bedtime at 9 mos. 

Beyond this stuff, I'd direct you to blackout shades (which you've already done).  In a lot of cases, early awakenings are reinforced if you bring them to bed with you at that 4-5am time.  I can even start to slowly creep earlier!  So, I'd be careful about how you respond.  If you treat it the same as any other night waking, you're more likely to have success eliminating it!