You'll have to excuse me.. I loss my memory when I delivered my placenta.. so I tend to be forgetful! I'm hoping that one day I'll find those brain cells-- but I fear I am losing more with each passing day!
Did I send you some information about early rising? I went back and checked my sent box.. but sometimes messages will sit in my outbox and never be sent out. Kinda frustrating..
I had a consultation for Brendan, when he was close to 6 months old. I was banging my head against the wall, and had run out of strategies in improving his naps. He was the King of the Cat nap.. and I finally dethroned him!
A couple of things I did..
1 I had to work on his early rising and naps at the same time. They were hand in hand, affecting each other. Brendan would wake at 5 am, but would still be sleepy (or sometimes at 5:30). What he was doing was waking before the last sleep cycle.. which biologically resembles a nap or the beginning of night sleep-- very light. So, I made changes to his environment-- made the room as dark as possible.. not a speck of sunlight enters that room. I also purchased a sleep sack (best purchase I have ever made!), because he was getting cold around 4:30, and he would fling off his blankets. The temp. dips in our house, partially due to the air conditioning. Also, I "double diapered" Brendan, so that he wouldn't soak through..when he did, his sleeper would get cold and wet and wake him up. I used loads of diaper cream, to create a barrier.
After environment changes, I made changes behaviourally.
-- Made sure he was wide awake at the beginning of his night sleep and was falling asleep in his crib, independently. Sometimes he would start to fall asleep on his top up bottle.. when he did this, I would stop the feed and wake him up. I also fed with the light on, talked to him.. etc. A few times, he would fall completely asleep.. so I would wipe his face with a wet clothe.. I know.. cruel. But I needed to reteach him to fall asleep in his crib independently.
-- When he woke at 5 am.. if he was chatting.. I would leave him be. Literally, he would chat and chat and chat.. I would just lie in my bed. When he started to cry, I would go in as discreetly as humanly possible.. I would rub his back, if he was hysterical then I would do pu.pd, some mornings he would just fuss.. not cry, so I wouldn't enter his room. Only if he was hysterical, I need you cry, that I would go in.
-- I decided that 6:30 would be our start time, So if I was in the room, I would leave.. go back in and reenter doing a dramatic wake up-- turn lights on with a dimmer, "Good morning"-- the key is you want to be consistent because it acts as a cue-- "when mommy is in my room, with the lights off, I am to go to sleep.. when the lights go on, then it's time to wake up"
Some mornings were rough and yucky.. some mornings were great. It took about a week of utter consistency and patience to iron it out. We still return to early rising, when there's been a change-- vacation, teething, dev. milestone and ear infections have all triggered his early rising. I would go back to the above strategy and within 3 days he's back on track (Thankfully!)
-- I went back and looked at her previous daily routine. make your dramatic wake up to be around 7 am, since that was her previous start to the day.
-- What I would recommend doing, is to look at setting your naps a little more by the clock, ie. morning nap after 9 am, regardless if she is early rising, since you will be working that out, and her afternoon nap to be no earlier than 1:00. If she has a great morning nap, than make her afternoon nap 3-3.5 hours from her nap wake up. (which you are already doing) but if she is having a lousy morning nap, ie. pulls a 45 min nap and wakes up at 9:45.. then don't put her back down until 1:00. Those days will be a little rough.. but you won't have many of them. Once the late afternoon cat nap is gone, what tends to happen is the morning nap will lengthen to 1.5 hours and the afternoon nap will be 1.5-2 hours as well. Also, make sure she is going into her bed awake but drowsy.. I used to wind down too long, in fact Brendan would start the stages of falling asleep in my arms.. and I was robbing him of the opportunity to fall asleep independently. I thought I was teaching him to fall asleep, because he would lie down in his crib, shift once and then fall asleep.. but I was actually rocking him to sleep. Once I made this change, his 45 min. napping days were long gone!
Generally, the hours of awake time is 2-2.5 hours/ 3 hours/3.5-4 hours (before morning nap/before afternoon nap/before bedtime)
It was wonky in the beginning, he would wake around 2:30 pm.. and those days I would do a lot of one on one interaction, cuddles and snuggling to help him get until bedtime. I would also pull bedtime back to between 6:30-7:00.. once everything improved, then I returned bedtime to 7-7:15 ish.
Hope this helps!