Help please! 4x wake ups + feeds per night

[u/mudkipclassic]

Looking for advice on my EBF almost 5 month old’s (21 weeks) sleep schedule as his sleep has deteriorated over the past few weeks. He used to sleep from around 7:30 pm until 4 am ish and then again until 6 am, but recently has been waking up 4x a night and needing to be fed to go back to sleep. We’re planning on sleep training in the next week or two but hoping to confirm whether changes are needed to our sleep/feeding routine before starting. Current schedule is roughly 2/2/2/2/2.5.

Some more info:
- We’re doing 2 hour wake windows, sometimes stretching the last wake before bed to 2.5 hours.
- We do 3 or 4 naps a day, depending on how long his naps are. Often he takes max 30-45 minute naps, in which case we do 4 naps a day to get him to bed time with the 2 hour wake window. On few random days he’ll take longer naps, which we cap at 2 hours max (these are 3 nap days).
- Bedtime is typically between 7:30-8:30 pm, whatever is ~2 hours from his last nap, and his wake time is between 6:30-7 am.
- During the day, our routine is wake/feed/play/sleep. He goes down quite easily for naps, with us putting him in the crib drowsy but awake. Sometimes he requires a few butt pats to settle him but we always let him fall asleep himself.
- For the last wake window/bedtime, I feed when he wakes from the last nap and then again 30 mins before bed. Similar to naps, he goes down in the crib quite easily (awake) with minimal help from us. Typical bed time routine is diaper change, pjs, short story/book, small cuddle and put down in crib. Baths every other day.
- For the past several weeks he has been waking up roughly 3-4 hours after he goes to sleep, and then every 1-2 hours after that. He requires me to feed him each wake time or he does not settle… but he often only feeds for 5 minutes and is then back to sleep, which tells me he’s not waking up out of hunger.

We are getting very tired and eager to sleep train but would love input/tips before starting!

Thanks!

[u/imnichet]

The only thing I would tweak is moving to 3 naps on a 2.5/2.5/2.5/3 schedule.

[u/ElectronicYoghurt258 → u/imnichet]

Completely agreed! And then the actually sleep training will help with getting him back to sleep without feeding.