u/Due-Photograph-916

Baby just turned 5 months and finally moved to an appropriate schedule after following chat gpt’s wrong advice that baby was overtired. Schedule is now 1.75 / 2 / 2 / 2 / 2. Baby can go to sleep independently, a little bit of crying but then she’ll give me decent stretches with 2-3 feeds, which I don’t mind. We are 4 days into this new schedule and tonight she had 2 false starts, 40 minutes after she went down and 40 minutes thereafter. She then proceeded to wake up at 11:30 pm, another 1 hour after her 2nd false start and then 12:30 am. I’m sitting here holding her to sleep and she fell asleep right away, looking at me with those big round eyes of hers before nodding off to sleep.

What am I doing wrong?! Her naps were perfect today and we followed her schedule down to a tee. She had 3 hours 15 minutes of naps. I don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t get why all of a sudden she can’t go back to sleep after feeding and why she’s waking up every hour. Desperately need help.

My baby is 21 weeks as of 5/14/26 and has been going through what I imagine is the 4 month regression as of about 2 weeks ago. We started sleep training right when she hit 4 months at 16 weeks and got about 2 weeks of decent sleep. We did modified ferber, moved her to her own room (previously cosleeping) and moved her into a crib instead of bassinet.

The past few weeks have always begun the same. Hysterical crying as soon as I put her down, which then leads me to rock her to sleep (there goes my sleep training). Then false starts, either 1-3 times a night, she usually wakes up 40-45 minutes on the dot, after I put her down for bedtime. Each time I have to pick her up, rock her and then put her back down, she'll give me about 2-4 hour stretches, and then she'll wake up 2-3 times a night, 2-3 hours apart. I usually can put her down asleep after feeding her (breastfeed at night for convenience, but bottle feed pumped breastmilk/half formula during the day to monitor if she's eating enough during the day). Her wake windows seem relatively short for her age, but it works for us because she usually goes to sleep at 7:30-8:00 PM and wakes up anywhere between 6:30 AM-7:20 AM. Wake windows are as follows: 1.75 / 1.9 / 1.9 / 1.9 / 2

She still needs that catnap at the end of the day. Naps are very consistent as we have a nanny who can save all of her naps: 1 hour / 1 hour 15 / 45 minutes / 15-20 minute catnap

I don't know if we are going through the regression, because she started waking up every 2 hours, and naps seem to end at 30 -45 minutes (but can generally be saved by a pacifier). I don't know if we should be lengthening her wake windows, but everything chatgpt is saying is that she's overtired and needs shorter wake windows. She gets really fussy by the time we get to 1 hour 45 minutes, so I really doubt she can make it to 2 hours. I am afraid to lengthen her wake windows because it will have the reverse effect of earlier wakes in the mornings. Just looking for any advice at all!

Sincerely, FTM