Awake time and nap issue confusion!!

[steph2608]

I have a lovely 7 month old who (usually) sleeps through the night. She goes to bed at around 6.45/7pm and wakes at around 6.30am. We started solids a few weeks ago and are now up to 3 meals a day. We also do baby classes most days of the week at 11am. She goes down for naps fairly easily (unless she is overtired - usually late afternoon), however they are almost always 30 minutes exactly. Occasionally she will surprise me and sleep for longer and I have no idea why! I have looked for reasons as to why she sometimes napped longer but am at a complete loss! There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it and it happens only very occasionally! Up until a few weeks ago, she would happily nap every 2 hours for 30 minutes (usually only 1.5 hours before first nap) taking 4 naps a day. This no longer works. Her awake time has extended to around 2.15 - 2.45 minutes depending on the time of day and so we can no longer fit the fourth nap in, but she is a nightmare if she has to stay awake from 2.30/3pm until bed. I am trying now to push back the first nap so that it is a little later but she is still only taking 30 minutes. She usually wakes up happy and I give her up to 10 minutes to see if she'll go back to sleep but then go and get her. Should I be waiting longer? I have read in some places that the first nap should only be 30 minutes (which she is doing) but in other places that it should be at least an hour! I am confused!! I am also struggling to work out when to feed her lunch. Straight after our baby classes and therefore before her second nap, but potentially stretching awake time to over 3 hours? Or get her to sleep straightaway but then have her potentially wake up early from nap due to hunger? My other alternative is to skip lunch and give her a bottle before her second nap as this is quicker and also calms her, and perhaps introduce lunch in a few weeks once we have a more settled 3 nap routine.

Any thoughts or advice?

Thanks!

[Littlef00t]

Some babies just are cat nappers, I've never found a way of forcing a longer nap.

In terms of dropping a nap, I found the easiest way to manage it was to allow a nap when they got tired but wake them after 10-15 mins so they weren't too awake for bedtime, slowly reducing the length of nap as it gets nearer bedtime, sometimes a chilled out walk in the pram was enough without even a nap.