5 month old - 30 minute naps

[steph2608]

My LO is 5 months old and sleeps brilliantly at night (often from 7.30 - 6.45), however daytime naps are only ever 30 minutes long. She has 4 naps of around 30 minutes which means that she is only getting 2 hours sleep during the day. When we try and put her down to sleep at around 7pm she is exhausted and rubbing her eyes. She often then needs white noise to go to sleep to because she is so tired (we use white noise during the day for naps too). Should I be trying to extend daytime naps to see if she will be less exhausted in the evening? I'm worried about trying to change things too much as she's so good during the night!!

Thanks

It's a bit of a nap transition. She'll start to be able to stretch out the time between naps and take fewer, longer naps soon.

DS was in a transition between 3 to 2 naps at 6 months IIRC and was a chronic 35 minute napper at that age.

This chart suggests an awake time of upto 2 hours 15 www.mybabysleepguide.com/2013/02/average-sleep-charts-by-age.html

It is unfortunately trial and error to see how long she can go without being an overtired mess.

I suppose you're reluctant to put down before 7.30 to avoid any 5.30 wakeups but some babies sleep longer with an earlier bedtime.

How does she fall asleep for naps? I did wake to sleep for naps with DS. This means that as he slept for 35 minutes that I would go in at 30 minutes and pick him up and cuddle him through the sleep phase into the next one.

He basically was just waking up after one phase of sleep, still tired but not completely able to get through it. I did the WTS for a week and then he was consistently taking longer naps.

Thanks for the reply. I had thought about trying to anticipate her waking up and then rocking her to stop her from waking up fully, but I was a little concerned about it affecting night time sleeping! She will stay awake for only an hour in the morning before her first nap but then will go almost 2hours and 15 minutes to the minute between her other naps. I think I will give it a go tomorrow, particularly with the early afternoon nap as I heard that this should be the longer one.