Early Wake Ups

Hello, im in a bit of a pickle here. My almost 13 month old daughter’s sleep has been all over the place for the past month and Im losing my mind.

Background: Baby is 12 months old, almost 13 months. She started walking the week she turned 1. She has been a great sleeper since she was a newborn. I would wake her up to eat until the doctor told me she was okay to sleep until she woke up on her own which was right around 2 months of age. The day i stopped waking her up to feed her, she started sleeping through the night. Shes an independent sleeper, I put her in her crib wide awake and she will fall asleep on her own and has never woken up during the night (expect for teething, or if shes sick, but always jumps back to her routine without any issues). She used to go to sleep around 8:30pm and would sleep 11 hours even 12 sometimes overnight. She is currently on a 2 nap day and has been since around 7 or 8 months.

This was up until the week of her first birthday. We live on the east coast and went to celebrate my baby’s birthday with all of our family that lives on the west coast (3 hour difference). I know, horrible idea, idk what I was thinking. The week we were there, she started walking, and her naps were all over the place with the time difference and her big fomo. It was the perfect storm.

We came back home and everything has gone to hell. It’s been 4!weeks of early wake ups, a cranky toddler, and nap refusals. She would start crying and refusing all sleep from the moment we would walk in her room. She wanted to be rocked to sleep and we did for a few days since we knew she was overtired from our trip but quickly stopped once we realized we were creating a bad habit. We let her cry it out and thankfully it took her about 3 days to go back to independent sleeping. She is no longer refusing her naps, and bedtime and nap time is a breeze. She goes to sleep within a few mins of being put in her crib, no crying or fussing at all. The only problem im still facing is the early wake ups. I know it probably has to do with the time change. Since coming back, shes been waking up at 5am, sometimes 6:30 if im lucky. She‘s crying and screaming from the moment she wakes up, and will stop the moment i walk into her room. For the last few weeks i’ve let her cry for a few mins to see if she can fall back sleep on her own. There’s been about 3 times where shes cried for about 10 mins and will fall back asleep until 6:30am. The rest of the days, ive treated the early wake ups as night wakings. I go in there to help soothe her, I keep her room pitch black, i dont talk to her, and I sit on the recliner with her until our DWT of 7:30am hoping this will help shift her internal clock back. However, sitting in the dark trying to keep her calm for 2 hours is brutal. Im at my wits end. She wakes up ready to start the day and will get bored quickly and cry until we get out of her room which sucks bc shes starting her day pissed.

I use the owlet monitor which helps me track her sleep. These early wake ups have forced me to look deeper into her sleep cycles, something ive never really had to do before since sleep has never really been an issue. Something I noticed since coming back from our trip was that her night time sleep varies alot depending on her naps. If she napped for longer, her night sleep would decrease and she would wake up even earlier. I started to notice that her total sleep tends to stay around 12 hours, no more than that. I started capping her naps to 1 hour each hoping to get her to sleep atleast 10 hours at night but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I even tried capping her naps at 45 mins each, Ive tried an earlier bed time, a later bed time, less daytime sleep, and nothing seems to be working.

Her current schedule looks somewhat like this:

Wake up: anywhere between 5:30-6:30am

Will sit in room until DWT: 7:30am

1st Nap: 10:30-11:30am

2nd Nap: 3:30-4:30pm

Bedtime: 8:45pm

If im being honest, sometimes it changes a bit depending on our day but thats what we’ve been trying to stick to. Sometimes she doesnt nap for the full hour, sometimes she goes a little over, or bedtime will be a little later.

Today she woke up at 5 am and I was exhausted. I couldnt do it anymore, so i turned off the volume on my camera monitor and just let her cry it out. She cried for about 20 minutes and fell back asleep until 8am when i went to wake her up. She had swimming lessons at 9am and will normally get tired after that and sure enough she couldnt stay awake after swimming lessons to reach the 10:30am nap time. She went down at 10am and fell asleep at 10:10am no crying or fussing and woke up at 11:30am.

What am i doing wrong? Is it really possible to get her to stop waking up so early? Im so exhausted, i dont know what to do anymore. Letting her cry it out this morning felt awful but at the same time gave me hope that she does have the ability to fall back asleep. The other thing Im considering is dropping from 2 naps to 1. I tried that too for like 2 days and it seemed to get worse, but im thinking maybe i didnt give it enough time to work. I just dont know if it’s the right thing to do because she seems tired everytime i put her down for a nap. She practically pushes off my chest and tries throwing herself on her crib for both naps. She goes to sleep within 5 mins of me putting her in her crib which tells me she is tired.

Has anyone had a similar situation? What helped with the early wake ups? Did transitioning to 1 nap help even if she did good with both naps?

Should I stick to the two naps and let her cry it out in the mornings for a few days to see if eventually shell stop crying and will just connect that sleep cycle on her own and start waking up later? or should i just drop a nap and move to a 1 nap day?

Ill take any help or advice I can get, thank you!