5 year old no longer sleeping well....

[craftymama]

Hi all, I haven't been in here before, I mostly hang out in the pregnancy forums. We are expecting baby #3 in October. While I know middle of the night wake ups are in store for me anyways, and really I don't sleep through the night as it is with having to pee at least twice, I'm desperate to get my 5 year old sleeping through the night again. My daughter has always been a really good sleeper, which is why this is so odd for us. From 6 weeks old she's slept through the night, and as she got into her toddler years she slept from 8pm-8am if not woken up for daycare. We always joked she was just a princess who needed her beauty sleep! She has had her nights where she woke up scared and wanted to be cuddled, but they were few. Suddenly the last couple months, we are graced with her presence every night(well, early morning I guess) at just about the same time- around 4am. Sometimes it's as early as 2am, but mostly it's around 4am. We can't figure out what it is that's waking her, but whatever it is it happens literally nightly. It's always been my "thing" that I never wanted my kids to feel they couldn't come to my room, so we've never put limits on it. My kids know that if they wake up scared I am there for them, they just need to run down the hall. It's never been a big issue before now. DH and I talked about setting a limit on how long she can stay, as right now we just let her spend the rest of the night with us. But with a baby coming that will have to end eventually as who knows how many times baby will wake, and then she'll be getting even less sleep. We've talked about letting her stay in our room for 10 minutes, then Daddy will carry her back, but I'm not sure that will do much to avert her actually waking up, and like I said, I don't ever want her to feel unwelcome.

Also, she starts Kindergarten this Fall, and I'm concerned about her not getting "good" sleep if the wake-ups continue. She will be in school all day, from about 9:15 am-3:30pm, not counting bus ride. So while she can make up for the sleep she's losing when she wakes right now, soon I need to start getting her used to waking around 7am to get ready for school, instead of letting her sleep in a little, and she's one of those kids whose day is pretty much ruined if she doesn't get enough sleep.

Has anyone else had a normally good sleeper suddenly become a not so good sleeper? Any thoughts on what could be waking her up? We've asked her, and the response is always "I don't know..I just got scared." Any thoughts or input is greatly appreciated.

Edit: I forgot to add, bedtime is a struggle usually these days, bedtime is at 8pm and some nights she is still awake at even 10pm. It usually takes her at least an hour to fall asleep. We tried bringing her to bed an hour earlier, but it's still pretty light here at that time right now so she ends up fighting it even more and is still not asleep until 9 or 10pm.