Can our routine be improved? 5 months

[Hiraeth20]

My little one is 5.5 months old and we’ve definitely hit some kind of sleep regression/ growth spurt so looking for advice on how to help him (and us) through this.

Our day looks a little bit like this at the moment:
7am - wake up and first breastfeed
8.45am - nap 1 (30 mins)
10am - feed
11/11.15 - nap 2 (30/40 mins)
12.30/1 - feed
2pm - nap 3 (30 mins)
3.30pm - feed
4pm - nap 4 (huge struggle)
5.30pm - bath
6pm- last breastfeed
6.30/7pm - bed

Recently he has been waking up to feed at 10pm, 2am and 5am. I did wonder whether he was doing this for comfort but the feeds last 20 minutes or so and he is definitely glugging and if I try and settle him without feeding he just gets more upset.

Is there anything we could be doing better? The issue we have is that we think he’s transitioning from 4 to 3 naps but isn’t able to do a long stretch during the afternoon. He then fights the 4th nap and this can make bedtime really stressful for everyone as he’s over tired (we think?) and screaming. He has also only recently been feeding every 3 or 4 hours over night, he was sleeping 6/7 hours without feeding prior to hitting 5 months. Is this typical? I assume it must be a growth spurt (please tell me it gets better)

I’m really just looking for some reassurance that this is typical for a baby his age and there isn’t anything we could be doing better to support him and obviously get more glorious sleep ourselves.

Thank you

Given baby is wanting (and seemingly needing) 3 night feeds in the night, my first thought with your routine was not sleep based, it was calorie based. I would be feeding much more frequently to that at 5 5 months- this is possibly the peak time for milk intake in the run up to weaning.

Your baby is having 3 in 8 of their feeds over night, so more than 1/3 of their calories are missing in the daytime, having to be made up for in the night.

I'd suggest 2 hourly feeds.

This works well with the short nap phase. You could reduce down your awake time (to around 80-90 mins) so that your days become repeating two hourly cycles of:

Wake (note time, plan next nap for in around 90 minutes)
Full Feed
Awake time (until been awake for around 1h15).
Settle to sleep
Sleep
Repeat.

Cut out the 4th nap and see what happens.

I’ve been so consumed with the nap timings I hadn’t even thought about increasing day time feeding, thank you for your advice I will definitely try this out tomorrow.

Fitforforty, thank you for commenting. We have tried cutting it but it made the lead up to bedtime really difficult as the poor thing was shattered and we felt we were just having to distract him until a reasonable hour to go to bed.

How about making the 4th nap later and bedtime later?

I think you need to start increasing wake windows and drop the 4th nap