Hi! I’m new to this forum so please bare with me. Apologies if this is really long-winded.
My partner and I have a 5 month old daughter. She is our 1st child so we are newbies! We exclusively breastfeed.
Recently, she has been waking every 1-2 hours at night crying out. She generally settles fairly easily with a dummy but still wakes again 1-2 hours later. I tend to offer her to feed twice although usually only once does she seem to have a proper feed. The other time is usually barely a feed and more of a comfort, but i usually still offer this just in case.
As well as this frequent waking, she’s gone from sleeping until 7 am to waking at anytime between 5 and 5.30am. She will happily stay in bed when this happens and then usually drifts back off to sleep around 7am. Before now, we were getting up at 7, but I feel i can’t do this when she has been awake from 5-5.30am but do not want to reinforce her waking at this hour by getting up.
So any advice regarding night waking and early morning waking would be hugely appreciated.
This then takes us to her nap schedule. We seem very stuck between a 4-3 nap transition. Having 4 guarantees a late bedtime. Having 3 means bedtime would have to be as early as 5.30 (which i feel would again reinforce early waking). We seem to be struggling with getting nap durations right...
As were approaching the nap transition from 4-3, she tends to want to have 45min in the morning, then anything between 90 mins - 3 hours at lunch (sometimes she only does 45 min but this is becoming less frequent), then 45 mins in the late afternoon.
I am concerned that when she does the longer “lunchtime” sleep (generally starts around 11-11.15), she is getting too much daytime sleep. But, if she doesn’t do a long sleep then her 3rd nap comes almost too early for it to fit with a decent timed bedtime.
Her awake time is currently 1hr 45m - 2hrs max.
ANY help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!