Help with self-settling

[kathok]

My bubs is 5 1/2 months old now I am thinking I need to get a bit more organised with our sleeping routines. I would love some feedback on how I can change what I am doing gradually. My aim would be for her to self-settle for all sleeps (without emotionally crying- ie tears) and not have to be wrapped. She is still exclusively bf and I have been demand feeding her. I'm going to start her on solids soon but will still be bf'ing her as well.

For nights we have a pretty good routine: She has a bath at about 6.20pm and then a feed. I then burp her, put her down while she is still partly awake and wrap her with her arms in. She self-settles herself and goes to sleep within 10 mins usually. She sometimes sleeps though until about 6am but can wake for a night feed between 1.30 and 3am. Not sure if I should be trying to get her to go back to sleep without a feed or not? Atm I just feed her and she self-settles and goes back to sleep.

For day sleeps it is a bit more random. She seems to usually have between 2 and 3 sleeps a day (apart from the rare but horrible days when she decides she wants five 1 hour sleeps ) I still feed and burp her before putting her down when awake and wrapping her. Sometimes this works well and she self settles and has a good sleep. Occasionally though, the timing is out as she is hungry but not really sleepy yet and I end up either having to cuddle, re-wrap her numerous times while she is crying her little heart out. Sometimes if she is just yelling rather than truly crying she will eventually self-settle and go to sleep. Most of the time though she and I are way too upset and I get her up. Unfortunately after these occasions I have to wait until she needs another feed to try again and often she is overtired by this time.

Wrapping during the day is hard also. I use flanelette at night and it is stiffer and harder to get out of than the muslin wrap I use for days. She often gets herself loose and then wakes herself up fully. There is little chance of getting her to self settle once she has done this. I would like to wean her of wrapping but I would like to get her sleeping routine in place first. I don't want to try and change too much at the one time iykwim.

I am happy with the night routine (apart from the ? about night feeds) but I think I really need to come up with a more adaptable routine for days. I would like to do the whole feed, play sleep routine (to eliminate waking from burps and the above situation) but I don't think she is quite good enough with the self-setting yet to do this. Has anyone got any hints on how I can help her to be better at this? There has to be a way to teach them how to self-settle without the crying? I really don't want to use CC, she is way too little to understand!