5 month old waking every 30 minutes night and day

[3SavBoys]

My 3rd little guy started out like a dream. Up until a little past 4 months, he napped great on his own in the swing or co sleeper, and only woke 2-3x overnight to briefly nurse. All of a sudden about 5 weeks ago, he started waking overnight every 30 minutes or so, sometimes taking up to an hour to get back down. Naps turned into a disaster and only seem to last 30 minutes whether I hold him or not. A couple weeks ago, I started resorting to co-sleeping due to pure exhaustion. He now will only fall asleep nursing. If my husband tries to help with a waking or put him down for a nap, the baby screams as if he's being tortured.
It's obviously time for a change and it appears he needs to learn to fall asleep on his own to get past the transitions. I'm been reading about shush/pat and pupd, getting rid of sleep props, spacing out feeds, etc. I am ready to tackle this, but could use any words of advice you ladies have before getting started. Also, he was swaddled, but we moved onto the merlin sleep suit... and it had been working great before this regression. I'm back to swaddling, but would like to give him a lovey to sleep with (in case he wants to suck on/snuggle something. Should I swaddle or use merlin? Should I keep using the co-sleeper he's been in since birth, or completely rip off the bandaid and go ahead and move to the crib since he'll outgrow the co-sleeper soon anyway? Or would it be better to keep him where he's used to being during the training process? Currently he screams if put down awake regardless. I also don't want to completely cut off his night feeds right away, but am not sure what a suitable time is to allow him to nurse instead of doing pupd when he wakes. Help, please!!

[Martini~]

Hello Honey and welcome to the forum:)! Sorry that you have waited for the reply.

Sooo, great taht you want to start. As a starting point can you please write down your day log? So the moment the baby wakes, you put him to sleep etc? Preferably in the EAS format:
WU 7am
E 7:05
A till 8:30
S 8:30-10:00
E .....

Thanks!

[3SavBoys]

His schedule is a bit varied as his naps tend to fluctuate in length, but this would be pretty typical right now:

WU 6am
E 6:05am
A til 8am
S/E in wrap on me 8am-8:30am (have to take big brother to school at 8:30am)
*if he has slept til 6:30am, I can usually keep him happy and awake until we get home from school drop off, and then right down to nap at 9am
S 9:30am-10:15am
E 10:15am
A til 12pm
E 11:45
S either from 12pm-2:15pm (happens once or twice a week) or more likely will only sleep 12pm-12:30pm - I don't do anything different on those lovely 2 hour nap days and can never predict when it will happen
Short nap days:
E 12:30pm
A til 2pm
S 2pm-2:30pm
E 2:30pm
A til 4:30pm (despite attempts to get to sleep at 4pm)
S 4:30pm-5pm
E 5pm
A til 6:30pm
E 6:15pm
S 6:30pm
*on days he takes a long nap around noon, he picks back up with the late afternoon nap around 4:30pm

Starting around 7pm, he wakes and needs to be put back down about every 30 minutes until I go to bed, and then I just let him co-sleep out of exhaustion. Prior to this regression, he had slept great alone in his co-sleeper next to my bed from 7pm-7am with a dream feed at 10:30pm and a brief nursing session at 5am.

[Martini~]

So firstly I would start to think of A times. Have you seen typical A times for an average baby?  We would go for around 2.5 at 5mo if you want to achieve a good nap and some kiddos would need to go for even more - when your A times seem to be a tad shorter.

Re nights - I would start at NFs separation by 3h and than peek one "space' and try to leghten it so ie from 22 till 3am you aim for no NFs and make the baby resetlle any othe rmethod.