My LO will be 5 months next Tuesday and this week she has started waking up so early. From day 1 she's been a good sleeper, we never really had to train her or anything, she just knew day vs night and would sleep her longest stretches at night. She has basically set her bedtime to be between 530-7 pm and this is pretty constant (minus a few random nights that she'll be up until 8 pm) and she usually wakes up once during the night to eat (usually between 1-3) and then would go back to sleep until 430-5 am. This was perfect for us!! But this past week her wake times have been 4:02 am, 3:50 am and today 3:25 am. Now I can do the 430 shuffle but before 4 am????? No can do.

Yesterday and today I let her be awake in her crib and she was just talking away until I got her out yesterday at 445 am (so she'd been laying there talking for about an hour) and started my day. This morning when she woke at 325 I nursed her b/c her last feed was 930 pm (which is NOT normal) and I thought maybe she'd go back to sleep but once done she was wide awake so I put her back in her crib until her daddy got her out at 4 am.

Is this normal? Will she go back to sleeping longer? Is there something I should do to encourage her to sleep a little longer?? Is letting her lay there in her crib happily talking the right thing to do??

Any advice is appreciated!!!