Wake & E: 6amA: 6.15am (if not sooner -she is a speed eater)S: 7.30amE: 9.15amA: 9.30S: 11.15E: 12.15A:S: 2pmE: 4pmA:S:7pm
Beautiful routine for a 3-4 month old baby. Not a 5.5 month old. She needs a serious A time increase and that will help immensely with your NWs. She's almost certainly just not tired enough for a proper night sleep. She'll also be miles easier to sleep train when she's got an appropriate routine.
after an hr & half awake she will spend her time yawning her head off.
Have you tried a change of scenery - different activity? This can be a sign of needing more stimulation too. Can also be a symptom of fluid in her ear and various other things so worth getting her checked by a doctor if you feel so inclined.
With respect to her daytime routine and nighttime sleep, the basic facts as I see them are:
- Your routine currently has 1.5-2hr A times and your baby is very used to those.
- Your baby is doing UT naps all over the place and the long nap in the afternoon is because she's finally tired enough to sleep a full nap
- Average A time at this age is 2:30-2:45
I therefore see a couple of options:
- Fix the routine in one big jump up to 2:30 A time which will likely result in some OT nap wakings that you can probably resettle and all should be sorted in a week or so. This option does have some OT involved and you have to stick with it or your days can get very messy very quickly.
- Increase A time by 15mins every 3-4 days and you should be just about caught up to where she needs to be in 4-5 weeks if I'm being optimistic. This option runs the risk of being very complex with OT/UT loops establishing and patterns not being reliable to tweak routine.
It's been like this since the 4 month sleep regression
This was the time to increase the A time gradually. I think you're in a big hole now and its going to take a big jump to climb back out again. I'm happy to hold your hand through that but you have to be ready to commit to it, stick with it for a potentially rough 3-4 days of resettling OT 30min naps.