Nap or night-time sleep?

[LunaNova]

Hi all!

We've been fortunate that our lovely 7 month old DD has always slept relatively well, but I'm finding naps becoming increasingly difficult due to (I think) timing.

A typical day is (I'll use Monday's times as an example but times do vary as we go on wake times):
6:15am wakeup and feed
My husband then changes her and takes her downstairs with him, she stays in her sleeping bag and he puts her in her moses basket downstairs where she chills out and then always falls asleep about 1 hour 15 minutes after first waking and this sleep is normally at least an hour.
7:30 - 8:40 sleep
He then brings her back up to me before he starts work (working from home).
10:50 - 11:20 nap
1:20 - 1:55 nap
4:20 - 4:50 nap
7:25pm bedtime (with a dream feed at 11, then woke at 3:15am for a feed, then slept til morning).

So you can see apart from the morning sleep the day is characterized by 30 minute naps. It was like this a few weeks ago and then seemed to right itself, but seems to have gone back to 30 minutes since last week.

I've always classed the first sleep as a nap, and as I've been using the huckleberry app she's technically having 3/4 naps per day which is giving small wake windows so I'm not sure whether to take the first sleep out of the equation and treat it as 2/3 naps per day to try and lengthen her sleep (I'm not sure if her wake windows are long enough for a 7 month old?).

Like I say her sleep at night is great and she settles relatively easy. It's just the days she only has 30 minute naps by 3pm she is understandably grouchy. She's also on the cusp of crawling so I think her mind must be in overdrive.

Yesterday afternoon she woke after 20 minutes and I managed to resettle her and she slept for a further hour, the difference was massive. But I've tried to resettle on many occasions and I fail much more than I am successful as she pings awake as soon as she hears me enter the room.

Do you think taking the first sleep out of the equation and lengthening her wake windows might be worth trying? I'm not sure if I'm putting her down for a nap too early.

Thanks in advance!

[Disappointedkoala]

I aimed for 2,3,4 hours awake time around that time. I'd read that the first sleep of the day is really important and DD was always ready for a nap by about 1.5-2 hours (she was still having an early nap be when all her pals had moved to a lunchtime one!) You might see slightly longer naps if you stretch out the gaps a bit more.

[Dexy2020]

My little boy is a bit older (just coming up to 9 months) I aim for 3/3.5/4 to 4.5 and his nap lengths have become so much better, occasionally we have to have a 3 nap day if he throws in a random short nap but more often than not at the moment its 2 nap days. This may have also come at the same time as he's started crawling and he's probably waring himself out, but I would try and stretch out the awake time maybe for a few days and see how you get on, could be worth a try? Xx

[LunaNova]

Thanks @Disappointedkoala that's really helpful! I think it was the first sleep that's been throwing me off because it doesn't follow the pattern of all her other naps (always longer than an hour and seems so soon after waking).

I'll give it a go lengthening her wake times and see how we get on! On the days where her afternoon nap has caused her to wake up too late to fit another in she seems to easily go 4 hours to bedtime so maybe that's the answer!

[LunaNova]

Thanks @Dexy2020! I'm giving it a go for the next few days to see if it makes a difference! She slept in later this morning so is just going down for her first nap now, she's had an extra hour wake time than the normal hour and 15 minutes so hopefully this will still be a good nap .

[Dexy2020]

Arrrrr let us know how you get on 🥰may take a little while for her to adjust, hope it works for you xxx

[LunaNova]

Thought I'd give a day one update!

So first day of trying to extend wake times resulted in the following:
7:15am wake up
9:20 - 10:50 nap
1:50 - 3:15 nap
7:15pm bedtime

So all in all a successful first day! She didn't fight any of her naps and while she stirred at the 30 minute mark of both naps she just rolled over and went back to sleep (hurrah!).

Hopefully the success continues!

[Dexy2020]

That's absolutely perfect!! Well done!! Fingers crossed it continues to work for you 😍xx