5.5 MO waking 2 - 5 times a night

[Kitkatsplat]

Hello there!

My LO has never been a great night sleeper. She's never slept through the night. I BF in the day until around 5-6pm and then we switch to formula overnight. Despite tanking her up as much as possible before her 7pm bedtime, she fairly regularly wakes around 10.30pm, then anything between 2 - 4 hours after that for the rest of the night, waking between 6am - 7am. Sometimes she'll eat around 4oz - 5oz, sometimes she'll just graze. Sometimes she'll settle back quickly, sometimes not. I just don't know what I should be doing!  Because I'm wondering if she's expecting more of their calories during the night, I'm currently BF more regularly in the day.

Here's her average schedule:

E: 7am (she's always been a super fast eater, even when I was feeding her every 3-4 hours. Takes her 5-10 mins.)
A: 7.05am
S: 9.05am
E: 9.40am
A: 9.45am
S: 11.45am
E: 1.15pm
A: 1.20pm
S: 3.20pm
E: 4.55pm
A: 5pm
S: 7pm
NW: 10.30pm, 12.30am, 4am

[becj86]

Hi

Sorry you've not had a reply as yet!

2hr A time is great at 4 months but there are no babies I know of at 5.5 months (unless they're 8-10 weeks prem) that need only 2hr. She'll be carrying a certain amount of chronic OT from the short naps and she's habituated to naps after 2hr, so she will seem OT if you keep her up longer but you have to, to get better naps and better nights.

I suggest you choose from these options and stick with withever one you pick:
- Fix the routine in one big jump of 45mins A time which will result in some OT nap wakings that you can probably resettle and all should be sorted in a week or so. This option does have some OT involved and you have to stick with it or your days can get very messy very quickly.
- Increase A time by 15mins every 3-4 days and you should be just about caught up to where she needs to be in 3-4 weeks. This option runs the risk of being very complex with OT/UT loops establishing and patterns not being reliable to tweak routine.
- Somewhere in the middle of the road is to do one big jump of 30mins in A time, then increase by 15mins after 4-7 days if necessary. This runs both risks stated above, depending upon the child.