How much does your 5 month old sleep?

[Shootingstar2289]

I have a 5 month old baby daughter who does not seem too want to nap for too long. She will have a few 20 minute cat naps throughout the day, but she is not grumpy in between naps.

She used to sleep very well at night due to lack of napping in the day.. She would go to bed about 8 and wake around 5-6. But now she wakes anything between 2 & 4 and is wide awake from then! She sometimes nods back off for an hour in the early hours - if I'm lucky!!

Is this enough, some nights she might only get 6-7 hours?

Plus she a very light sleeper. Any tips? I have a son who used to and still loves his sleep so she is used to noise but I only have to move slightly at night and she opens her eyes.

One exhausted Mummy 😴

[HollyC255552]

This all sounds exactly like my DD who is 22 weeks..she does however go back to sleep in the early hours but only in my arms or our bed if i try to put her back in her crib she is awake within minutes.

[Shootingstar2289]

My daughter is like that too, will only really nod off when she's in my arms or in our bed which I try to avoid as my 4yo still climbs in with us! I think she just wants mummy cuddles lol.

[HollyC255552]

Yeah we dont really want go get into the habit of bringing her in our bed...but when your that tired in the middle of night you just do it dont you. I agree with the mummy cuddles...awww

[FATEdestiny]

You don't say how many 20 minute naps throughout the day. But I don't think that's really enough sleep anyway. At this age I would be expecting about 14-16 hours sleep in 24, as an estimate.

I would focus on:

(a) Frequent daytime naps, concentrate on shortening awake time between naps
(b) Extending daytime naps, developing resettling methods
(c) How your DD goes to sleep, so she can more easily go back to sleep independently.

[Newlywed56]

Have you heard of Ewan the sheep...it does white noise with a heartbeat to mimic the womb noises. Ours was a really light sleeper and if she stirred at all that was her awake... Now first sign (if I can get to it in time lol) is put the sheep on and she just drifts back over. We only introduced this at 4/5 months and I was extremely sceptical (it also cost £30 but I tried it on a sleep deprived whim) that we had maybe left it too late but it really really works for us.