Sleep cycle issues?
My daughter is almost 5 months old. She is EBF.
From a newborn she did 2-3 hour stretches overnight. Around 10-12 weeks she would generally sleep through from 10/11pm to 5/6am feed and then back to sleep until 9am.
Around that time she could take a while to get to sleep, we’d battle the witching hours and probable overtiredness for a few hours before she finally settled. Whatever method worked - feeding, rocking, walking around etc.
Around 3.5-4 months her sleep changed dramatically. 30 - 40 minute cat naps in the day, relying on contact mostly. Night sleep was still fairly reliable until recently.
Naps have not lengthened and are a mixed bag, some contact naps can be extended to an hour but generally her internal timer pings at 30 minutes and she’s awake. Sometimes happy and alert, sometimes groggy and clearly tired. I will try to get her back to sleep by rocking, 50/50 chance it works.
Over the past 2-3 weeks, she is waking regularly overnight, lucky to get a 2-3 hour stretch. Is seems to correspond with finishing a single sleep cycle and waking fully.
Bedtime routine is consistent, dark room, white noise, sleep sack, rocking and singing until she falls asleep which is generally within 10 minutes. This is between 7-8pm. Commence several false starts until sometimes 11pm where she may do a 2-3 hour stretch. Sometimes experiencing split nights, where she wakes around 2/3am and can’t fall back to sleep for an hour. Then hourly wakes until 7ish. I try to only feed after 2-3 hours not during every wake. I will mostly resettle by rocking.
I suspect she is struggling to connect sleep cycles since the 4 month regression hit.
My question is, will she naturally develop the ability to do so? Or, do I need to wean away the sleep support (I.e. rocking) and do some kind of gentle sleep training? I am reading so much conflicting advice and becoming very overwhelmed and consumed by this.
I have not attempted any sleep training yet because it’s advised to wait until at least 6 months. But I am concerned she is learning to rely on me getting her to sleep every time she wakes. For reference, I do try to soothe her in her cot before picking her up but this escalates to hard crying where she has previously made herself sick. Tried putting down awake and even if she’s calm for several minutes she will escalate to crying as above.
Wake windows range from 1hr45-2 hours depending on her nap length and sleepy cues. She averages 2-3 hours daytime sleep and 10-11 hours overnight.