My lo is 16 weeks, so I realize we are not in the greatest of sleep phases...but the past week she's been waking up hungry most mornings around 5-5:30am (generally after a 9.5 hr stretch). I treat it as a night waking and leave the lights off and feed her in bed and most days she eats for a while and dozes off. In the past, I've picked her up, burped her, and put her back down to sleep and it's worked fine. But lately, every time I pick her up at that time to burp her, she wakes up fully and then is up and wants to play! And then I can't get her back down for around 2 hours when she's ready to nap.

I can't tell if this is her waking for the day, in which case trying to get her back to sleep would be hopeless. But she seems exhausted at that time, so I'm guessing she's not ready to be up for the day just yet. Also, it means she's sleeping 9.5 hrs at night, and I think babies are supposed to get more than that? She used to get at least an hour more at night.

Any tips on avoiding this? Or is this just a manifestation of the 4 month regression and I should just hope this is the worst it gets? She's also been really congested in the am, so we've had to Frieda her at that hour a few times, which doesn't help matters!!