Anonymous wrote:OP here I would love her to sleep later than 5am but it's where we are right now. She is struggling to get a 3rd nap in, hence the early bedtime. I would love bedtime to be more like 6:30/7:00 and wakeup 6:00.

This is the schedule I was aiming for....but the naps are too short and she seems to get tired before 9am so her nap has been earlier but then if all naps move up in time, she still won't take a 3rd nap! I don't know I'm at a loss.

6:30 Wakeup + Nurse / Bottle
7:30 Breakfast Solids
9:15 Nap
10:15 Wakeup
10:30 Bottle 6-8 oz
11:30 Lunch Solids
1:15 Nap
3:00 Wakeup
3:15 Bottle 6-8 oz
4:30 Dinner Solids
5:40 Start Bedtime
6:15 Bedtime + Nurse / Bottle

Yeah if she is waking at 5am, you can't wait until 9am for that early nap. For that first nap of the day, I would try to make it happen as soon as remotely feasible. Put her down at 7:30am if she starts to seem tired. I think one thing that might be happening is that she's getting tired from the early wake up and not getting that first nap soon enough, and that is leading to over tiredness and fussiness, which is making her too restless to get a long nap in.

As for the late afternoon nap, I would experiment with on-the-go naps. That nap has to be short anyway, because you don't want it to negatively impact bedtime. I'd aim for a 15-20 minute nap, and use whatever mode of transit she is most likely to sleep in (carrier, stroller, car). Schedule a daily outing, rain or shine, between 4 and 5 pm, and see if you can get her to take a mini nap. Even 5-8 minutes.

I think if you can get a little cat nap in at late afternoon, it will buy you some more longevity in the evening, making a 6:30 or even 7pm bedtime more feasible, which should also help her start sleeping later than 5am.

These are little adjustments, don't try to upend her whole sleep schedule. I'd just aim to make that morning nap earlier to try avoid over tiredness, and then see if you can work in a late afternoon nap that breaks the "crib/dark room" rules, since that's the nap she's going to drop soon anyway, once she has the energy to get from the afternoon nap all the way until bedtime without too much fussiness.

8 months may still just be too young to connect sleep cycles at nap time. My first couldn’t do this reliably until 9 months. My new baby is now 11 months and she’s on one nap and about 50% of the time she STILL can’t do this. She wakes up at the 45 minute mark and screams, and to get her back down I hold her on my chest for another hour while she naps. It sucks, especially because I now have a non-napping preschooler to deal with too.

So my suggestion is just … try holding to extend the nap? Sorry, babies can be so difficult.

OP here I would love her to sleep later than 5am but it's where we are right now. She is struggling to get a 3rd nap in, hence the early bedtime. I would love bedtime to be more like 6:30/7:00 and wakeup 6:00.

This is the schedule I was aiming for....but the naps are too short and she seems to get tired before 9am so her nap has been earlier but then if all naps move up in time, she still won't take a 3rd nap! I don't know I'm at a loss.

6:30 Wakeup + Nurse / Bottle
7:30 Breakfast Solids
9:15 Nap
10:15 Wakeup
10:30 Bottle 6-8 oz
11:30 Lunch Solids
1:15 Nap
3:00 Wakeup
3:15 Bottle 6-8 oz
4:30 Dinner Solids
5:40 Start Bedtime
6:15 Bedtime + Nurse / Bottle

Some children are like that - it's not a bug, it's a feature. Mine was one of them. Once they start consolidating naps, you may get an hour plus nap. Think of the total sleep in 24 hr window - because yours sleeps so well at night, the daytime is shorter.

Anonymous wrote:Some kids are like that. I have a child who never napped more than 45 minutes until she dropped to one nap (early, around 1 year), and even then more than an hour was iffy. Great night sleeper though, almost since birth. I just stopped trying to make her nap longer than she wanted and counted my blessings about the full night's sleep.

I had the exact experience. I tried so many things to extend naps but in the end it was just wasted energy.

Anonymous wrote:She’s way too old for wake windows. Two naps a day, at the same time everyday. Lose all sleep props - rocking, feeding, etc. 5am isn’t sleeping through the night so I’d tackle that first. Good naps follow good night sleep. 6:15 seems really early.

5am is fine for sleeping through if the parents are okay with starting their day at 5am. I'm one of those parents: 6:15PM-5AM overnight sleep for the baby sounds lovely. Agree that shifting from wake windows to fixed nap times, especially since night sleep is consistent, is a good idea however.

Some kids are like that. I have a child who never napped more than 45 minutes until she dropped to one nap (early, around 1 year), and even then more than an hour was iffy. Great night sleeper though, almost since birth. I just stopped trying to make her nap longer than she wanted and counted my blessings about the full night's sleep.

What is her nap schedule?

At that age, my DD was doing her longest nap in the morning, and the time between waking up from overnight and taking that nap was also her shortest awake window. Her afternoon naps were often short, and the shortest was the pre-dinner nap, which at that point was really just a brief doze. So our schedule was like:

6:15am - wake up, eat, pay time
8am-10:30am - nap
10:30-1pm - eat, play, walk in stroller somewhere
1:pm-1:45pm - nap
1:45pm-4:30pm - eat, play, walk in carrier
4:30pm-4:45 or 5pm - doze in carrier on way home, usually, might go a little longer if she was very tired, but if I tried to remove her from carrier, she'd wake up
5pm- 7pm - eat, play, night routine

I wonder if your early bedtime and early wake time might be making it hard to get a consolidated long nap in during the morning.

She’s way too old for wake windows. Two naps a day, at the same time everyday. Lose all sleep props - rocking, feeding, etc. 5am isn’t sleeping through the night so I’d tackle that first. Good naps follow good night sleep. 6:15 seems really early.

Baby is about to be 8 months old and I'm trying to solve short naps.

She sleeps through the night - typically from about 6:15pm - 5:00am without a feeding. But during the day it's hard to get a nap that is more than 30-45 mins. Her wake window tends to be about 3 hours and she sleeps in a dark room, with a sound machine and sleep sack etc.

When she wakes up I will leave her to fuss for a bit to see if she will fall back asleep, but that never seems to work. She ends up crying more and more and then I pick her up.

And the cycle repeats...

Any help appreciated!