How to make baby’s bedtime consistent?

[Chocolatbox]

My 6 month olds bedtime varies so much day to day anytime between 8pm-10pm depending on last nap. I want it to ideally be 8pm everyday latest (I know this is on the late side but any earlier won’t work for my family) but if his 3rd nap ends at 3.30pm, that’s a long time until bedtime so I often need to squeeze in a 4th nap. I often cap the 4th nap to 20 mins but it can still mean bedtime is pushed really late. He can normally comfortably go 2 hours between naps or 2.5 hours if stretched or has napped well. Nap length varies so much, which means it’s hard to get into a routine. How do people make bedtime consistent? Do you just keep your baby up until the time you want them to go to bed and put up with a grouchy baby?

My 6 month olds bedtime varies so much day to day anytime between 8pm-10pm. I ideally want it to be 8pm (I know it’s on the later side but any earlier won’t work for my family) but if his 3rd nap ends at 4.30pm, that’s a long time to wait until bedtime so I normally have to squeeze in a 4th nap which can sometimes mean bedtime is pushed back quite late. His nap length varies from 30 mins-1.5 hour (normally 30 mins) but you can never predict how long it’ll be so it’s hard to get into any kind of schedule. His wake windows are normally between 1 hour 50-2.5 hours.

How does everyone get consistency with bedtime? Do you just keep your baby up until the time you want them to go to bed regardless of when last nap ends?

If baby isn't tired enough at 8pm or they've had too much day time sleep, they won't go to sleep easily at night.

Stick to 3 naps max! Can you try pushing back the start of each nap by 15-30m to extend the wake windows and stretch them out across the day?

Mine started to drop to 2 naps around 7m and then started to drop to one nap a day around 11/12m. Starting to drop the nap completely around 23m.

Whoops thought I’d deleted the message so posted again 🫣

@Margo34 His naps are most often 30 mins long so if I stick to 3 naps, that’s only 1.5 hours of day sleep and he’s an overtired mess by bedtime! I do my best to try and extend the naps but it doesn’t often work.

I wouldn't stress too much right now about the actual time - when my boy was 6 months he was all over the place, but we also had 30 min naps. His evening feed was so long that bedtime was between 9 and 10pm. Just stick to awake windows and get through this period.

At 9 months when he started crawling, his naps started to lengthen out. We fell into the proper routine once that improved