Long evening nap 6 months old

[furryelephant]

So my DD is 6 months old and an awful overnight sleeper

She naps okay generally, have to rock/bounce/music/dummy to sleep without fail.

She's been on 4 naps a day for quite a while, but the past week or so has turned her 4th nap into one lasting an hour and a half until I wake her up so she's ending up waking up from her last nap around 7pm and going to bed for 9pm (hopefully). Is this her trying to get rid of her 4th nap and push her bedtime earlier?

Yes I would. Can you push back the other maps to try and compensate for losing the late one?

DS is 7 months and sleeps for 1 hour around 8:30am and 1.5 hours around lunchtime. He will sometimes do another half hour around 4:30 but not always and goes to bed by 7pm.

She's awake for between an hour and a quarter to 2 hours between naps so sometimes it's hard to stretch them as she gets overtired so easily. Her first nap is around an hour after waking most of them are around 40 minutes, today she's had 2 naps of 1.5 hours which is just amazing! I think I might really try and stretch them and move bedtime, having an evening would be amazing if I could get her in the cot!

I'd cut out the fourth nap and move her bedtime earlier. DS was always in bed by 6 at that age.

At 6 months mine had 3 naps, one at 9-9.30, one at 12-1ish and one at 3-3.30. They dropped the 3 o clock one and lengthened the lunchtime one at around 8 months then dropped the morning one at 12 months.

Sorry posted too soon! So yes I'd try to drop the fourth nap, in conclusion!

The last daytime always stretches, in my experience. But I think I do naps in a very different way to you op.

Crucially, "daytime" means my daytime (ie 7am to 11pm, or whenever I go to bed) until baby starts to independantly stay asleep through the evening, when I would start introducing the earlier evening bedtime.

In my experience this development to stretch the last nap to become part of night sleep hapiens around 4-8 months, so the timing is about right for your LO.

But as I say, you are looking at napping in a very different way to me. Until naps lengthen, while baby is still young, I would be much more organic and be led by baby.

For example from 7am, I could fivide the day into 2 hour block of time. In every 2h block there would be a feed and a nap. Say:

7am wake
Feed, play, activity
8.30 sleep

9am wake
Feed, play, activity
10.30 sleep

11am wake
Feed, play, activity
12.30 sleep

... And so on. You get the idea. Until:

5pm wake
Feed, play, activity
6.30pm sleep

7pm wake
Feed play and "do bedtime"
(Bath, night clothes, massage etc)
8.30 sleep
(This continues to be a nap though. Just like the rest of the daytime naps)

So this last nap. Maybe it will last 30 minutes like all the others. So if waking at 9pm it would be quite normal but the only difference would be no playtime. Just feed, straight back to sleep.

But without me doing anything, the nap will start lasting longer. So it might be go to sleep at 8.30pm (for a nap, but in PJs) and not wake for the next feed until 10pm, or 10.30pm. Once it gets to the stage that I wake baby when i want to go to bed, rather than the other way around, that means that "bedtime" (meaning going to sleep and staying asleep in the early evening) starts, so baby goes to sleep upstairs. I've usually got to this point around 5-6 months old.

The nap at the end of the day extending is therefore normal development, in my world.

Then as sleep matures, and naps get longer, awake time between daytime naps extends and the last nap of the afternoon isn't so much "dropped", it's just that extending naps times and a wake times means there isnt time in the day for it.

My feeling is that you are being overtly structured before baby is ready. The time for "Mummy Routine Queen" will come. It's usually when naps extend and consolidate though.

Thanks all for the advice!

@FATEdestiny I do try and be baby led, the rest of the day is completely down to her when she naps and how long for (unless going out etc) it's all always completely different lengths so every day is different obviously!

that does make sense about the last 'nap' having no playtime, after putting her down hopefully for bed, 9/10 times she wakes back up after a sleep cycle, feeds, and (hopefully) back to sleep I was just confused whether her lengthening her evening nap was a sign that that was when she wanted to go to bed for the night, she usually wakes and I feed her and she goes back to sleep for a while