Extremely sleep deprived.
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Is she warm enough? Have you tried some white noise? Does she have a dummy? Is she teething? My little girl has been and that’s made her wake up a bit more on some nights. Now she’s 5 months we’ve started using anbesol which is good and if she’s really bad give her a bit of calpol or neurofen. They’re the few things I can think of!
We had the same - just didn’t come out of sleep regression and it was awful and not sustainable. I’m on day 6 of some sleep training and she’s gone back to 1/2 wakes a night and in her cot 7-7!
Sounds like they are not able to connect sleep cycles by themselves. Teaching them to fall asleep independently will help. If you feed to sleep for bedtime, this is what they will expect everytime they wake up. They may have also made a connection between milk and sleep which may need breaking. Unfortunately what you have described is very common and I have a couple of struggling friends in the same situation.
@Catherine when bed sharing, I just sleep with the boob out to try and get some sleep. She rarely helps herself but she likes the comfort.
@Samantha she's likes things toastie, we know she's wrapped up a bit too much but she wakes so much more when she feels the cold. White noise didn't help at all, red light wasn't helpful. She uses a dummy but wouldn't rely on it too much. Been teething for months now. When her teeth are sorer she will sleep a lot more!
@Leonie that's actually amazing!! We have tried using the gentle version of the Ferber method, I will only let her cry for just over a minute and keep the same time between each. Only issue is she's getting so worked up it's impossible to resettle her without doing a full reset.
@Conchi I would agree with not connecting sleep cycles, she chucks her head side to side and thrashes about then wakes herself. I would rarely put her down asleep from a feed, she's 90% of the time drowsy but awake. She's very good at putting herself to sleep, she associates stories and into her sleep sack with sleep. Most awakenings, she would just need comforted with a head stroke, hand holding then maybe twice occasionally three times looking for a feed.
Believe it or not tossing their head side to side IS them trying to self soothe, my daughter did it and my boy has started doing it too. It sounds like she has the cues and ability to settle to sleep, but she needs you extra right now for whatever reason she can't tell you. If it's any consolation my boy is pretty much the same as your girl rn, he's only in the last week started sleeping a 4 hour stretch in his crib again and then spending the second half of the night with me. Before the regression he was sleeping 7.30pm-1.30am, a distant dream 🥲
It does take a while with sleep training and- first few nights some wakes took us 30 mins or so to get her asleep but it does eventually work. The sleep consultant said to us picking them up often resets the clock and makes it take longer. Have you considered working with a sleep consultant if it’s really bad?
If you are already dping drowsy but awake I would try awake. For us drowsy would only work when they are small babies, now mine needs to be fully awake. This has helped to do longer streches
When bedsharing, are you side lie feeding her? Mine often wakes 1.5 hours (we bedshare following safe sleep seven) but I find it less tiring as I don't have to get out of bed to feed, I just get the boob out half asleep.