Help with 5 month old

[lorajbk]

Hi mums,
I would like to try and put my 5 month old on the EASY schedule, however she only takes 4 short naps of about 30minutes per day. if I intervene (like pick her up and rock/walk with her) I can get her back to aleep again (for example now she has been sleeping for 2 hours but 1.5 of those in my arms) but I can only usually do this for one sleep per day.
She also feeds ever 3 hourly and I try to give  her 1-2 solid meals per day (these are usually in between feeds).
She does not have a set daily routine at the moment, but more often than not will wake up around 7. She also wakes up 1-2 times per night. Bedtime is usually structured around her last sleep timr and I do have a pre-bedtime routine  in place.
Can anyone help me with a sample schedule for her or advise me how to work around these short naps.
Bedtime is also a struggle as she was self-soothing until about 2 weeks ago but now she needs to be rocked to sleep. I try put her down just as her eyes are closing and sometimes she goes to sleep, other times she wakes up. She will also sometimes wake up 30 min after going to sleep. In the night she will start waking up at about 12:30 ish and I pull her into bed with me and  she will either have a feed at about 2 and 5:30 or just at 5:30ish. Actually there really is no rhyme or reason to when she wakes and feeds at night.
Please help!!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[Lindsay27]

If she wakes up at 7am what time would you normally attempt her first nap?  Short naps are common at this age, especially as this is usually the time when LOs start to increase their A times and push towards 2 naps by the 6th month.

2 feeds at this age is normal, and needing to be rocked could either be a symptom of UT or OT.  Once I get a better idea of your routine I can likely help a bit better . Maybe track a day or 2 and that can help us identify anything that jumps out.

[lorajbk]

Sometimes she is ready for a sleep just over an hour later. This morning it was at 9:30

Thank you for telling me that short naps are common. Everywhere else I read says that short naps means she is unsble to link sleep cycles. As I mentioned if I intervene she can sleep longer during the day but never on her own.

Today:

(Night feeds 2am and 5:30am)
Awake at 7:30
Feed 08:30
Sleep 09:30 - 10:00
Feed 11:30
Sleep 12:00 - 14:30 (with intervention)
Feed 14:30
Solids 15:30
Sleep 17:15-17:45
Feed 17:45
Bath 19:00
Bottle 19:20
In bed (but very awake) 19:45

Also, any idea what would cause her to suddenly stop being able to self-settle?

Thank you!

[Lindsay27]

Sorry for my late response, our house is sick and sleep is no longer!

Short naps can be a symptom of many things, being undertired or overtired, but sometimes it can be entirely developmental and can mean that LO hasn't learned to connect sleep cycles.  The fact that you can resettle short naps sometimes is amazing progress!

I think your A times might be a bit in the low side, so as a start I would try to push a bit longer, try 2.15hr to start.  Even that much more can allow for a full nap vs a short one.  I found during the 5th month we really had to ramp up A times, so much so that by 6 months we were doing a 3hr A time to push through the 3-2 transition.

Average A times- BOOKMARK ME!