Please help, 5 month old waking all night.

[akstein86]

Hello! My daughter is 5 months, will be 6 months on 1/21. I ebf. Here is her general schedule:

WAKE 7:15
nap 9:15
awake 10
eat  10:30
Nap 12:30
Awake 1:45
Eat 1:30
Nap 3:45
Awake 4:30
Eat 4:30
Bedtime routine 6:30 with feeding
Bedtime 7
Wakes crying 9:30 for a feeding
Wakes crying by 12:30, feeding
Wakes crying 3:30, feeding
Wakes crying around 6, feeding

She sleeps in our room in a rock in play. She also naps here during the day. She has a blankey she holds and sucks her thumb.  Her naps seem shorter – she used to have a long nap mid day. Now they are all 45 minutes, and she wakes up happy. I have tried to get her back down for longer and it’s not happening.
Nighttime when she wakes its not just slight fussing, she full out screams flails around acts panic-y. First feeding she does seem to drain both sides and goes right back to sleep. Second and third feeding if I try to just shush her or rock the rock and play it just escalates. I’ve tried rocking her in chair without feeding and that doesn’t go over. If I latch her on she will eat aggressively for maybe five minutes through one let down and goes to sleep. I am never sure at this point to just unlatch her and lay her down so that she’s not comfort sucking, or try to wake her so she eats more on both sides and hopefully sleep longer. Neither seems to make a difference or work. She still wakes up three hours later. I have tried to put her beside her dad thinking she smells me but only makes a small difference.
Nap time and bed time she puts herself to sleep. Usually we are on a good easy schedule and she eats at wake up and goes down after playing. She sucks her thumb and goes right to sleep if the timing is right. Bedtime occasionally I have to nurse her first but I still put her down drowsy awake and she puts herself down with her thumb. She really doesn’t comfort suck during the day.
Middle of the night feedings after I nurse her she gets her thumb and goes back to sleep. But she cannot seem to find her thumb or settle if I don’t pick her up and nurse her.
Two months ago she used to sleep a long 5-6 hour stretch after bedtime. Not sure what changed. I am so worn out from these night waking, I could handle one or two times a night. But she is consistently waking every three hours now, sometimes 2-2.5 hours apart.
I don’t think she needs all of those late night feedings, but I always worry well what if she really isn’t getting enough milk during the day. Would appreciate any suggestions, I am open to sleep training I just don’t know whats best at this point.

[Ima shel Alon]

Hi, sorry your post got missed.

It sounds to me like she is UT and a quick fix of increasing A times can help a lot.
I would increase them gradually, by 10-15min every 4 days.
Perhaps after increasing once or twice naps will lengthen to 1.5-2h and then you can stop increasing - but you would need to be consistent with times (and quite rigid, TBH) and give it the full 4 days to work.
Her NW can also be related to being UT so I would increase A times first, get better naps and then see if the nights change as well.

Let me know how you are doing.

[akstein86]

Ok I will work on the naps, thank you.

Yes the naps are consistantly 45 minute wake ups and I try to go in and get them to extend and it's not happening :-( but then an hour later she wants to go back to sleep, and it's a lot of work to get her to stay up another hour. So I will try to extend her awake time and hopefully that will help.

I am beginning to think the night wakings are to nurse back to sleep, and that we have a nursing prop problem :-( so  I will post over on props as well. I am just at a loss, she only napped 2 45 min naps and one 1.5 hr nap yesterday, down by 7 pm and then up every two hours all night long. it was a long night. I know I have to change something because this is too hard!!

[Ima shel Alon]

I often noticed that when our EASY needed tweaking there were more NW that I always settled with a bottle, but once his A times were right and naps were better the NW reduced a lot. I am really not sure that there is a prop there.

I know it's really hard to keep them awake, but it's really important.
If you want you can also work on just the first nap, so keep increasing her A times just for that and once you get a long nap (1.5-2h) then you can increase the rest of them.