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I don't know what others would say or if mine is a popular opinion, but I would sleep train in your situation.. CIO, or just something so that LO is able to fall asleep on her own. It may help with all of your night wakings and naps as well as bedtime. I can't advise on the daycare issues because I SAH so maybe someone else might be able to help. Though I do know from reading posts that lots of LO's in daycare have one schedule there and another at home on weekends.

Off the top of my head, I wonder if (after a few painful nights) she might sleep better without the swaddle and rolled towels. At this age, the ability to roll around and find a comfy spot on her own can work wonders. I swaddled my first until about six months but finally went cold turkey to a sleep sack when he began trying to roll. Of course the transition sucked initially, but after we got over the hump, he did better.

@Chillybear: my LO was a swaddle addict, but we stopped cold turkey last month after she rolled onto her tummy while swaddled. The first night sucked (took forever to get her to sleep and frequent wakeups) and naps the next day were very short to non existent, but the second night was much better and she was back to normal by the third night. We had planned to swaddle wean so that we could eventually start some form of sleep training, but didn't end up needing to. Once she figured out how to sleep unswaddled, she learned to fall asleep on her own within a few weeks.

@Chillybear: We haven't sleep trained at night (we did nap train and it was so easy) because the few times I've tried to let her cry it just resulted in to much work and more exhaustion for me, I'm lazy I know. I did however want to commiserate in the past month my great night sleeper has stopped being a good night sleeper, it is not uncommon for her to wake up 6+ times! For us I think a part of it was just delayed 4 month sleep regression and teething.

It sounds like for naps you really need a routine though. I don't actually think the amount of sleep she is getting is that bad (although our nap sleep is pretty bad so don't trust me on that). My almost 7 month old normally gets 2-3 hours total of nap time (3 hours on a super good day) but she has always been a bad napper. We do about 2-3 hours of awake time with 3 naps generally. I try to keep the majority of her naps in her crib and I did the 3 minutes of crying thing for nap training but I stayed in her room while she cried, after 3 minutes I would give her the pacifier again along with her lovey, the longest crying she ever did was three 3 min cry sessions, now she can put her self to sleep for naps. She does still take car naps and carrier naps when necessary though, and it hasn't destroyed our routine.

@Chillybear: we've been having sleep issues too. We also had a lot of wake-ups that I knew were just out of habit. The sleep has worked itself out and wouldn't you know that lo likes sleeping in her own room and having a set routine for bedtime and sleeping. I let lo fuss for 10-15 minutes unless she cries differently, like a hurt cry. Most of the time she falls back asleep without needing to be feed. I started to set a time that she wouldn't be fed before and it's worked. She usually just wakes up if she is hungry, but if she wakes up out of a sleep cycle, she now can put herself back to sleep.

She sounds *so* much like my 2 yr old at that age. She was/is a super light sleeper, so she couldn't sleep well anywhere except a dark, quiet room. We started doing the "drowsy but awake" with her around 2 months, and she broke out if the swaddle at 3 months. She would wake every 2 hours each night until we finally sleep trained at 7 months.

I hated every minute of it but it was so worth it. I never let her cry more than 10 min before going and calming her down, and I stayed outside her door the whole time with a timer. It only took a few nights before it worked and she started sleeping in 5 hr stretches.

@Chillybear: That's so awesome that it worked! The same thing happened to me. It's like I had to finally let her try to fall asleep. As for MOTN, I think it will be trial and error for a bit. I let her cry for 3 min at the beginning to see if she'd go back to sleep and eventually I could tell what kind of cry was the kind that needed me. As you get more comfortable with it, you might go longer than 3 min. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I was waking her up by going in immediately. Silly baby, crying in her sleep.

@ms.janedoe: We did Sleep Easy solution and it worked so well for us. Naps took a while but LO was falling asleep on his own at night wtihout crying by night 3/4. Its so hard to hear your LO cry but in the end it was definitely worth it for us. I was going crazy due to the sleep deprivation.

So I would say put her to bed earlier *especially* if she is not sleeping well at daycare. Stop swaddling. Start sleep training. She is old enough to sleep through the night and wean off night feeds. Most babies like to sleep on their belly once they learn to roll. Get a good fan and use a light sleep sack instead of swaddle.