Last nap too long?

[vlooby]

My little one is a serial daytime cat napper and 5.5 months.

Was sleeping through pretty much until sleep regression but us in the arse around 4 months. No sign of improvement yet.

For about 3 weeks, given the opportunity (I.e quiet, still dark room to feed in) she'll nap for 2-3 hours around 3-5.30. If I'm indoors I try to extend earlier naps too, but it's always this one.

Do you think this could be the cause of her numerous night waking? Should I change something? If so, what? How?

Yours sleepily....

If baby's bedtime is around 9.30pm, 3-5.30pm nap is not unreasonable. If you are aiming for an earlier bedtime then this is late for a big nap. It would suggest baby is exhausted by early afternoon, possibly (?) She to cumulative over tiredness from the day.

The fact that baby can do a longer daytime nap means that she has made the developmental leap needed to stretch naps. So you could do with analysing why she is not extending naps at any other time. I can't make any suggestions on this without more information on her usual routines.

Thanks @FATEdestiny.
She's generally tired by 8 even with that long nap.

Today as an example
When woke around 6.15
Feed then play
Nap 8-830
Feed then play
Nap 10.30-10.45 (in buggy, got woken up by a very loud dog!)
Feed and play
Nap 12.20-12.50
Feed and play
Nap 3.10-5.35
Bedtime at 8

Except that last nap they are in her cot. Generally try to get her down just with dummy & white noise. Sometimes needs feeding (bf)
The last nap she starts in cot, wakes up crying, can't be settled without feeding, then basically dozes on boob. If she comes off I sometimes try to put her down, but she ends up more tired!

I've tried to refeed her to sleep for earlier naps but never seems to work.

Oh I see. I thought she was just staying asleep for the 2h nap. Resettling is great, it's what you want to do to teach baby to extend naps. But the fact that she has to be resettles would indicate she hasnt reached the developmental leap to link sleep cycles in the day herself.

I would just carry on trying to resettle every nap. Are you staying in the bedroom with her for naps? Because resettling needs you to be mega quick. The idea is to catch baby when moving from a deep sleep into a light sleep and settle back into a deep sleep, without waking up at all. Once baby has actually woken up, you've ususlly missed the opportunity to resettle.

Therefore either stay in the room as she sleeps, or go up to her 5 or 10 mins before you expect her to wake, and wait. I kept naps downstairs in the bouncer until they extended for exactly this reason. Plus the bouncer allows for hands-free easy resettling by foot bouncing it.

Ah I see, thanks. It feels like she's so far away from settling herself. I'm going to try staying with her for a few days and see what happens. Desperate to get a little more sleep at night!

Woulld you advise waking her up atbsome point from. This nap? We go upstairs at 8 and usually asleep by 8.30

Given the situation (broken nights and also short daytime naps) I would advise a philosophy of "any sleep, any how, as much as possible" - so therefore I wouldn't wake. She clearly needs the sleep given that she goes back to sleep at a time you are happy with anyway.

When I was in the short nap stage, no awake time was longer than 90 minutes at anytime and the nap schedule (of 90m awake then 30-45m asleep in the bouncer) continued right through until I went up to bed at 10-11pm. I still did bedtime routine (bath, massage, night clothes) at any awake time between 7-8pm, but then continued the nap cycles afterwards.

I didn't move to an early evening "proper bedtime" until the time came that baby went to sleep after the bedtime routine and I had to wake baby up when I wanted to go to bed (as opposed to baby waking and me using that as my cue to go to bed myself).

The timing for sleeping through the evenings coincided with naps extending, since it is the same developmental leap. For me, this was happening around 5 months but it's different for every one. Plus I sort of forced nap extensions by constant resettling in the bouncer, so mine learnt quicker.

Thanks for your responses Fate, so helpful. Just tried to get her to nap after 90, she fought it and didn't fall asleep until 120! Going to try & resettle her in about 10 mins when she wakes up though.
We're both so tired I feel like I need to do something, anything!

If 90m awake time is hard work, don't feel the need to force the issue. My child was better on shorter awake times, yours might be better on 2h and that's ok.