Five month old suddenly sleeping worse

[NoMustardPlease]

Hi all.

DD is 5.5 months old and usually a pretty good sleeper (sleeps 8pm - 5/6am, wakes up for a feed, then back down until 8/9am).

However, for the past few nights she has been waking up at 4/5am and then either flatly refusing to go back to sleep, or taking a long time to fall back to sleep and then waking up again 30/45 minutes later. This will carry on until I give up and get up for the day at 7ish. Sometimes she also wakes up within a few minutes of first being put down for the night and needs to be rocked back to sleep.

She still sleeps for a good 6/7 hour stretch at the beginning of the night (aside from the aforementioned wake up at the beginning), so I know it could be WAY worse, but having to start the day at 4/5am or being woken up every 30/45 minutes from 4/5am is starting to get a little tiring!

She sleeps during the day, but rarely for longer than 30 minutes. She doesn’t usually cry during these wake ups (in fact she seems quite happy!) so I don’t think it’s teething/pain. She’s also good as gold during the day (very smiley, rarely cries) so I don’t think the less sleep is affecting her.

She’s in the middle of leap 5 at the moment and has just learnt to crawl. Could this explain it?

Thanks

Definitely learning to crawl or it could be 6 month sleep regression. Sleep is not linear, it does not just always improve at times it gets worse.

It changes all the time - I found every new development meant sleep went to crap! My DS used to practice sitting up and crawling in his cot, I think he was still half asleep most of the time. Weaning gave him horrendous wind so we'd have to go in and help him fart it out at least once every evening!