20 wo mum on the verge. Please help!

[Katrix]

My baby is 20 wo and has been on easy since day 1.
She is EBF and still using a dummy to calm down before bed. She then spits it and keeps sleeping.
I am on a 3.5-4h feeding schedule already but she still has some hectic sleep patterns and I am seriously on th edge of loosing my mind.
Her easy is approximately:
6 am E
6.30-8 A
8 am s
10 E
12 S in the stroller on a walk
14 E
15.30 S
17-18 E
19 bath
19.30-20 S
22.30-23 Nf

She takes the feeding schedule really well, but her sleep is a mess and I honestly don't know what to do. I try to put her down fir a nap after 1.5-2h awake time and the feeding is almost fixed. She has days when all her naps are 1.5-2h and she eats well and still wakes once or twice at night. No pattern and she won't settle. I feed hear at night and she eats a full meal for 10 min.
Her naps are very inconsistent from 20 min to 2 h. She sleeps really well outside in the stroller when I'm out for a walk around noon.

Mostly for a nap/trying to extend a nap/going to bed for the night and the night wakes she won't settle sometimes for over 30 min. That means that her nap passes by and it's time for a feed or if at night I try calming her down and she won't settle so finally I decide she is hungry and feed her.
I try ssh/pad with and without dummy.
I started pu/pd and she is fighting me so I put he down. With and without dummy.
Nothing works.
Her limbs are all over the place and she turns her head left and right.
The book says to stop Swaddle after 3 m but she is sometimes hectic so I do Swaddle when it takes too long to calm her down.
It says she has to be sleeping 5-6 h stretch and trough the night after 3 m and she is absolutely NOT!
I seriously don't know what do I do wrong.

I am writing this at 9.45am after she took a 20 m nap and while she is screaming in the crib after 45 min of pu/pd and I just can't keep it together anymore. Should I Swaddle her every time? When should I stop swaddling for good? When I pu do I keep her upright or in a cradle position?

She is in her own crib in our room btw.

Not too hot or too cold she is not teething yet. Sometimes at night she wakes and poops then settles.

I am just so tired and sleep deprived.

K

I am begging y

[Katet]

Firstly Hugs, it's never easy when they are young & they don't sleep well

It says she has to be sleeping 5-6 h stretch and trough the night after 3 m and she is absolutely NOT!I seriously don't know what do I do wrong.

Secondly "she hasn't read the book" neither of mine consistently slept 5-6 hours under 6mo, some babies don't - which makes it hard when books make you feel they should.

In terms of swaddling, I swaddled both mine until it basically got too hot & as we didn't have Air con - that meant 30C plus here otherwise I think I'd have swaddled past 4-5mo & 7mo with both mine.

Has she recently got more hungry as there is a big growth spurt around 4mo & that can mean that babies feed a lot more than they were a few days earlier.

I'm wondering if you get the 20min naps if you put her down after less than 2hours OR if she is like my DS2 who would only 'tell' me he was awake when he was bored looking around the room, it was only when one time I was up with a sick DS1 that I discovered DS2 was awake at 5am & so the next morning I checked & he was the same, even though he didn't make noise until after 6am he'd been awake much earlier & so I needed to put him down for a nap earlier.

[anna*]

I would try pushing her first A time. Have a look here: Average A times- BOOKMARK ME! you can see that at nearly 5 months she can probably go to 2hrs 15 or even more. Also are you shortening the A time a little after short nap? The EASY you posted doesn't show how long she sleeps for so it is hard to tell.

If she wakes early from a nap I would try to resettle her for 10 mins or so - you will know if she is going to go down again or not. Life is too short to spend it in a dark room with a screaming baby. I would swaddle every time if it helps.

[michaeljacknnugg]

My guy is also 20 weeks and I just don't think he's ready to be consistent with his nap length yet. In fact your 2hr naps sound amazing!

We generally get one longer and two shorter naps a day and a twelve hour night with two to three feeds. I think that's pretty good for an ebf baby. Our A times are between two and three hours.

What is making you feel stressed? If you'd not read any books about how your baby should sleep, how would you feel then? Try to go by her signals and you will probably find she's getting the right amount of sleep somehow, even if it's not how you expect.

[Katrix]

Thanks a lot to all of you.
I was thinking about the expectations as well. At the end of the day she is just a baby being a baby.

It's not the night waking that gets me. I am mostly stressed because it's so hard to settle her down. She is obviously tired and just squirming all over the bed. That happens before every nap and bed time. And of course the added "I'm her mum and I can't calm her down" guilt.

I don't mind waking to feed her it's that I can't figure out when it's hunger and when it's not.

Kat

[michaeljacknnugg]

My general rule of thumb is if it's over two hours, I will automatically feed (breast milk can be digested very quickly; also if we get a long stretch at night we often get a shorter one following it).

If shorter than that I will try to settle him (jiggle a bit, change position, offer finger to suck). Water is not recommended at this age.

Are you set up for frequent wakes? We have a bedside crib this time and I can't believe what a difference it's made. I can just grab him or stick a hand on him without really having to wake up.