Please help! Cat napping baby who's overtired!

[Sassy14]

Hi,

Very exhausted mummy here My baby is 7 months old. She cat naps all the time, she can't yet link sleep cycles so only naps around 30-35 mins each time. I've tried everything to get her into another sleep cycle but she always wakes and then won't go back to sleep. She's becoming so overtired everyday and it's affecting her night sleep and routine.
Please does anybody have any advice to help with a cat napping baby and help resolve these sleep issues?
Thanks

How does she get to sleep and does she have anything she can use independently to settle?

Mine didn’t start long naps until she was mobile AND had dropped to one nap. Seems to be quite common. Even after she’d learnt to link her sleep cycles at night she would still do 30-40 min cat naps in the day, usually only in a moving buggy . But once she was moving she wore herself out more physically plus she had enough sleep pressure from staying awake all morning that she’d do 1.5-2 hours at lunchtime.

it was bliss for the 3 months it lasted and now I’m lucky to get 45 minutes

Oh so my only tip would be once I’d accepted it was a developmental thing and stopped stressing about it, it was not a big deal. It was only stressful when I was trying to intervene and make her nap longer. Once I’d come to the conclusion that she would do it in her own time, I was a lot happier!

Hi, we have a 9 month old with exactly the same problem. A sleep consultant told me she could fix it in a week so we paid our money and followed all the advice. She admitted defeat at the end of the week. If DS sleeps on us then he will easily go an hour. Anywhere near the cot then it's anything from 15-30 mins. I feel your pain. We are up in the night 2-5 times a night. I think teething is playing its part. We are thoroughly exhausted as we have a 3.5 year old too.
We have been advised to go to a cranial osteopath. I don't hold out much hope. Coming to the conclusion that we have a high needs baby.

Neither of mine did long naps until they learned to go to sleep by themselves. Prior to that it was 20 - 40 minutes.

My 8 month old only does 30 mins at a time with a wake window of 2 - 2.5 hours. I actually find it really convenient as she can often nap on the way to/from anywhere and if we’re at home we contact nap on the sofa and it’s a chance for me to sit down and read MN.
The people in my antenatal group who have babies with longer naps seem to be much more confined to the house / ruled by naps than I am.

I agree with the pp who said it was only stressful when I tried to force her to sleep longer!

If she seems tired maybe try shortening her wake window a little? Or she might be a little bit bored / frustrated if she’s not mobile yet?
There’s so much going on for them developmentally that frequent night waking is really normal (really hard, but really normal)

I found “let’s talk about your new family’s sleep” by Lyndsey Hookway really helped me change my attitude towards baby sleep and I’ve been loads happier since reading it