Hi there, this all sounds very common at this age. I had short nappers too but ended up staying much saner second time around as I'd always use the sling for one nap (the second, in our case) so that I could get out with DS and not worry about whether she'd take a long or short nap - she'd go longer more reliably in the sling, but even if she did a short one, she'd resettle more easily than in the cot. I just wondered if you could do anything like this with sling/pram, especially since you have a 2yo?
As a general rule, I'd shorten the A time following a short nap if you can, although IME you can probably get away with more if using a sling or something like that, if you have to. Whether that means going down as soon as she's finished feeding depends on things like how long she takes to feed. With my DS, who struggled with short naps for ages, he didn't actually need to feed more frequently than 4h at this age, and wouldn't take a good one if much less than that, but his wake/sleep cycle was 3.5h at best. I could sometimes get him back off again after a short nap by spending ages shh patting, but using the sling for the second nap meant that we could do a kind of staggered routine, kind of:
6:30 Up and E
8:30 - 10 Nap (not usually asleep for all this time, but I'd try to resettle)
10:30 E
11:45ish - 1:30ish Nap in sling
2:30 E
3:30-4:15/4:30 nap
4:30 E (cluster)
5:30 BT feed (long) and BT
I can't remember it exactly and your LO will have different A times (mine were short A bubbas), but you get the idea? Of course yours may need feeding more often, that's fine too - many LOs never actually stretch to 4h intervals between feedings, and if they take longer naps they often need topping up before the nap to prevent waking early from hunger. It's also fine for the third nap to be longer if previous naps were short, however some LOs this age will need it to be a CN, there really is a wide range of A times at this age.
Just thinking of ways to take the pressure off you - perhaps pick one nap where you do try and resettle in the cot and one where you APOP, then there's the CN which doesn't need to be long anyway.
There's a big sleep regression for all babies around 4mo which many 5mo (and their parents!) are still very much feeling the effects of. Has she ever self settled? How do you usually get her to sleep? Have you used shh pat at all? PUPD should really only be used as a last resort if other things (eg shh pat) haven't worked, and always in conjunction with soothing in the cot, at this age especially. In case you haven't read them, have a look at these:
Pick Up/Put Down (PU/PD) - Everything you ever needed to know!Shush-pat - How toTbh two night feeds is pretty normal at this age, especially if bf - is she bf or ff? I'd continue doing as you're doing for the meantime. It may well be that the 5:30am WU is routine related, if it seems to be habitual, so you never know, it may phase out naturally with some routine tweaks...
Please could you post a whole day's routine? That way we may have other ideas for suggestions for you
Oh and another thought - when you're carrying her around and she's smiling and cooing etc and not going to sleep, is that in a sling, trying to deliberately get her to sleep? Mine both got to a point, certainly by 5mo but I think earlier than that, where they needed some of the sling material over their face a bit (obviously making sure they were breathing freely!) to block out the visual stimulation, otherwise they just couldn't switch off.
Sorry this is a bit garbled, hope you can make sense of it as feel like I'm jumping around everywhere
((hugs)) this age is tough, especially with an older LO - even I found that a challenge and my older one was 4yo!
