Last nap of day battle. Help!

[Rachey22]

First post ever - long time lurker of a million threads over the years.

My DD is 3 months old and I’m having such a battle with the last nap of the day.

We don’t have a routine as such, I try to start and end the day within the same sort of hour 7-8 and go by her cues as to when she needs to nap.

Through the day, I try to get her back down for a nap within 90 mins and she falls asleep without any real assistance in a few minutes. Ideal! She also sleeps really well at night 10-11 hours with the odd wake up in the night. However the last nap of the day is a totally different story.

She suffers from the 40-45 min nap intruder so her naps are never long through the day so a good day would usually look like 4 naps 40 or so min naps.

I don’t think I can “drop” the 4th nap as that would sometimes mean she’s awake for 3-4 hours plus before a bedtime as early as 6pm.

I’m starting to dread the end of the day. The last couple of afternoons I’ve just had to stick her on to feed (she is EBF) and let her fall asleep there so she can refresh and at least get some rest before she gets a bath and we start bedtime routine (which in itself can take 2 hours!).

Any advice? Should I shorten the final awake time of the day so it’s even less than usuals?

Will her naps ever lengthen so that she might only need 3 naps?

Thanks

This too will pass!

It's quite likely that at least some of her naps will lengthen eventually. (This has been true for both of mine anyway and for lots of other people i know). She will also continue to gain time between naps.

Mine has this, is currently 9 months. Like yours at 3 months she was having a very solid night and a number of short naps in the day, increasingly struggling with the late one.

I suggest experiment with going a little linger between naps in the day. It might lengthen them and even if not it will shorten the gap in the evening.

Continue to try the evening nap but if it doesn't work, give up and accept the long nap gap. Be prepared to have an early bedtime and possibly another feed part way through the evening at e.g 8:30pm if she wants one.

Good luck, it will all be different in a few weeks anyway!

*longer, not linger sorry