5 month old 4:30 wake up- overtired or undertired? Not sure how to solve it

[Napqueen1234]

Hello

5 month old has started waking at 4:30 and I’m SO tired. I try and act as a night waking, dark room, patting white noise etc but she is just wide awake and chatting away so I take her downstairs so DH can sleep and we tag in around half 6 so I can get another hour or so. Have tried feeding her at this time but she takes an oz or two but is still wide awake.

Routine is wake 4:30 😱😱
Nap 7-8
Nap 10-11
Nap 1-2:30
Nap 4:30-5
Bedtime 7pm
Dreamfeed 10:30 (But has started waking for this)
Night feed between 1 and 2

She often has 4/4.5 hours of day sleep so part of me feels this must be too much but with the early wake up she always seems tired and is always rubbing her eyes and grizzly for the 15 mins before I put her down for a nap.

I have before let her sleep as much as she wanted and she slept for 5 hours or so in the day and that night she had a dreamfeed then slept til 6am. I think this was a fluke as it has never happened since.

Should I cap day sleep to the recommended amount for 5 months (3/3.5 hours?) let her sleep as long as she wants? Later bedtime? Anything please help! Open to any advice or experiences

I would not suggest limiting daytime sleep, I'd say your routine looks great and 2h awake window is spot on.

What I'd suggest is night weaning.

Do you have a different way to get baby to sleep, that is not feeding? if not, now is the time to start developing a different way to get baby to go to sleep at bedtime and naptime, that does not involve feeding. Move your daytime feeds to feed when baby wakes up, not when going to sleep. And at bedtime do the feed at the start of the bedtime routine, not the end (so, for example, feed while downstairs then upstairs for bath, into nightwear and into bed).

Then utilise your non-feeding method of getting baby to sleep during the night.

This should also shift your daytime feeding routine. If baby is currently having 3 feeds during the night, that must be a large percentage of baby's milk overall for 24h? It means having to fit in those 3 extra feeds during the day. So expect to need to feed baby (much) more frequently during the day, so the calories are not needed at night.

The idea is then that if you've not fed at night then by early morning, you can do a feed and it will help baby settle back to sleep much more easily. That isn't working right now because baby is having a massive amount of milk at night so is (understandably) not hungry in the morning.

There will be a period of transition in this, because initially while baby isn't having enough calories during the day to be sustainable then it's understandable that the night wakes may be due to hunger. But chicken and egg situation, you can only solve this by not feeding overnight (for a few days) so that baby is more hungry through the day. Which then perpetuates so that baby is getting enough calories from the day to not need any during the night.

At 5 months old, assuming bottle fed, I would be feeding every 2h, so allowing for 7 or 8 full feed bottles per day:
7am 9am 11am 1pm 3pm 5pm 7pm and sometimes an 11pm (ish)

How many bottles is your baby having over 24 hours @Napqueen1234? You need to figure out a daytime feeding routine that allows for all of those between the 12h they are awake, if possible.

@BabySleepTeacherUK thanks so much for your response (my heart soured when I saw your username 😂). I 100% agree with you the issue is night feeding which certainly doesnt help.

The good thing is she doesn’t feed to sleep- I got in a right mess with DC1 regarding sleep crutches so was really careful this time! She has a dummy but she never wakes just for the dummy, otherwise I just read her sleepy cues and lay her down and she generally just nods off. Sometimes I have to go in once or twice to reassure but otherwise she’s good that way. We sort of follow the EASY so she’s often had a bottle a good hour before any sleep, except bedtime where she has bottle, bath, bed.

The difficulty I’m having is the night feeds- you’re right she gets a lot of calories then and I’d say her only ‘good’ bottles are the dream and middle of night feed. Otherwise she dithers, has a couple of oz, maybe a bit more later. She’s nothing like DC1 who glugged down any bottle going she will only eat when hungry and then until satisfied rather than super full IYKWIM. I will try offering her feeds every 2 hours in the day from now and encourage her to take as much milk as possible. My plan was to continue full bottle with dream feed but gradually offer less at the night feed (eg 4 oz instead of 6 for a couple of nights, then 3 then 2...) until hopefully it’s dropped then do the same with the dreamfeed. I always try and settle her with dummy, head stroke etc first but she is genuinely hungry for it at the moment I think. Does that sound good or would you go cold turkey? I just think there would be a lot of crying which might wake DC1 and also I don’t know how to settle her if starving (probs not possible!).

Thanks again

Three night feeds is a lot of calories to just go cold turkey and stop giving all in one go. It's really up to you and how you think your DC will tolerate it.

I would make a concerted effort to get more calories moved to daytime though. So make a longer / bigger effort to resettle at night without feeding, do smaller night feeds. And at the same time make daytime feed more frequent, bigger if possible.

You could really do with sorting this before weaning, because weaning often exasperates the need for night feeds and not taking enough milk in the daytime.

Ok I will try! She only really has two night feeds- one dreamfeed (10/11pm) and then one between then and a bottle at 6/6:30 so hopefully it shouldn’t be as traumatic to phase out.