Bizarre sleep at 5 months

[LilyTiger]

I think I've tried my DDC's patience with my sleep questions long enough, so now I'm posting here in hopes of enlightenment/support/exorcism.

Until the four month sleep regression, DD had pretty good sleep habits.  A longish nap in the morning, a nap or two in the afternoon, and then two four or five hour stretches at night (the second stretch would be closer to three hours).  We were all happy and rested. 

Then she started having trouble re-settling at night.  Instead of falling right back to sleep after nursing, she would have to have boob in mouth and was very restless.  She also started nursing every 2-3 hours.  I'm now exhausted.

Now (after about a month of this) her daytime is going haywire.  Her morning nap (usually her longest) is now maybe 45 minutes and usually shorter.  She took five naps today, all of which were 30 minutes.  She was completely exhausted at 6:00pm so we swaddled her and I nursed her to sleep (which took forever) and now she's woken up every half hour crying.  I tried patting her back to sleep, which worked once, but the next time she woke up she was inconsolable without being nursed.  She couldn't have been hungry since she had just eaten 30 minutes before. 

She did roughly the same thing last night (really really fussy and up every hour from 7:30 to 10:30), but now the time between wakings is getting much shorter. 

Is this normal?  Is there anything I can do to help her sleep (both at night and during the day)?  We have white noise machines, humidifiers, she's in a woombie.  I don't know what else I could possibly do.

Does this sound like teething?  She's drool-y but doesn't seem abnormally fussy during the day other than the exhaustion.  Is it just the five month interested-in-everything phase?  If so, does it go away?  Or should I take her to the doc?  No fever or other signs of sickness, just total sleepy insanity.

ETA: She turns five months old on January 13.

[LilyTiger]

Well, I guess I don't need much help after all. 

 

I took a huge gamble last night and unswaddled DD when she woke at 9:15 for the millionth time. I had a hunch that the swaddle might be preventing her from soothing herself (she tries to suck her hand through the woombie) and I figured it couldn't make anything worse than it already was. The difference was like night and day. She spent about two minutes whacking herself in the face, then slowly calmed down, and then just passed out. She woke at 11pm, possibly due to a leaky diaper, and then slept until 5:30 pm. In the crib! With no nursing! I, of course, woke up at 4:45 confused about why I felt rested. I pumped and then DH brought her in half an hour later. She then slept again until around 9 am.

I don't know if this will repeat itself, but she's clearly capable of self-soothing now so we won't be swaddling anymore.  It was necessary when she was younger because she startled so easily, but not anymore.