What’s my baby doing now?

[SleepyBoPeepy]

TLDR at the bottom as I’ve included a lot of garbled history so as not to dripfeed!

My 8 month old has gone through phases of being an excellent sleeper to be a horrendous sleeper. As a newborn she only woke a couple of times a night and slept beautifully in her next to me, we were quietly smug.
Then the 4 month sleep regression hit at 3.5 months and we’ve been in sleep hell since then.
However, it’s actually improved a lot recently. Last night, for example, she fed when we went to bed at 10ish then at 2am and 6am. As she’s been waking every 2 hours for the last few months this is quite the achievement.

The problem we are having is 7pm - 10pm. From about 6 months she was being put to bed in her cot and would stay asleep until we went to bed. This then got worse and worse until we were spending an hour getting her to bed each night and she’d then cry every 20 minutes until we went up to bed. This meant that one or the other of us was up stairs with her between her bed time and ours. In desperation we put her to sleep on the sofa with us one evening and she slept all evening until we took her up to bed. Not ideal, but everyone was less stressed all round. I think she just wanted to be near us and that’s fine.
However, now she’ll hardly sleep on the sofa in the evening, she’ll maybe have a 40 minute power nap from 7:00-7:30 then she’s awake until we go to bed at 10. On the rare occasion she does sleep in the evening she’ll be wide awake for an hour in the transition from sofa to bed. No tears though so it’s not the end of the world but I’d like to go to sleep rather than have a baby roly-polying around my bed.
We thought it might be connected to naps as she seems to be between needing 2 and 3 naps a day. The number of naps doesn’t seem affect her overnight sleep though.
She naps on the sofa during the day.
Her cot would of course be better for naps but she seems to be happier when one of us is near. Her cot is 3 sides pushed up against our bed so she can’t really be left in the cot awake otherwise she can and will escape.
Does anyone have any bright ideas or should we just accept things as they are as this is much better than they were?!

TLDR: baby is awake from 7-10pm every night. Or will sleep from 7:00-7:30pm then awake from 7:30-10pm.
How can we change this?

OMG that is so long. Apologies!

Och sounds so rough. I’m no expert but after a horrendous sleeper in DD1 we got a book ‘The baby sleep solution’ by Lucy Wolfe, and it was miraculous. From 10/11mo, sleeping all night. It may be worth considering night weaning in a few months time , this can help night sleep.

What time does she generally wake up in the morning? Does this vary based on how she is in the evening? Just wondering if she is falling into a pattern of 10pm - 10am...

I’m not too worried about the overnight sleeping and by extension, night weaning. Maybe I will be in future but it’s got so much better recently it’s feeling fine at the moment. Which is quite sad in itself! The issue is the not properly going to bed till 10pm.

She’s still waking at 7am!

She naps for 2-3 hours across the day so I sometimes ‘worry’ she’s getting too much sleep in the day and it’s keeping her up but that doesn’t make sense as surely she wouldn’t sleep more than she needs!

I actually think she could be getting less sleep than she needs . If she is sleeping 10-7 that's not enough at night, but the 2-3 hour day time sounds about right. I wonder if it could be about nap timing, and getting it perfect for her going to bed in the evening. In an ideal world, she would wake up from her last nap no later than 4ish if you want her to go to bed at 7pm. What time is her last nap (not counting anything on the sofa in the evening!) and also what's your bed time routine like? When she went down in her cot well did you have a good routine, and do you still have it now? Sorry about all the questions, I have an 8 month old tricky sleeper and managed to get myself on track with him recently so just going over everything I considered and googled repeatedly

The nap timings are partly why we are stuck between 2 and 3 naps at the moment.
She had 3 naps yesterday but I had to wake her from the last one at 5:30! Then today she had two but the first one was only 30 minutes meaning it was a struggle to keep her up until a second nap which then ended up being 2.5 hours long! So she is capable of getting enough sleep in the day but once she wakes up it’s impossible to resettle her and therefore nap times can be incredibly varied!
She woke up from the 2.5 hour nap today at 3:30 though so she should have been ready for bed at 7!
We ended up coming up to bed tonight at 9pm as she was gambolling about downstairs. She had a feed and rolled over to sleep in her cot. No fuss.

There isn’t much bedtime routine since the sofa sleeping started. She has her nappy changed, has a feed, is swaddled in her blanket then goes to sleep. And then wakes up.
When we come up to bed she has her nappy changed, is put in her sleeping bag, invariably messes about for a bit, feeds, then goes to sleep with little fuss.

It’s so weird, she was getting really upset when she was going to bed alone in her cot at 7pm. Now she is quite happy but just acts like she needs less sleep. It’s just an act though as she’s sat next to us downstairs rubbing her eyes and yawning!

We are in the 3 to 2 nap transition and it's such a pain! We have it the opposite way round to you though, goes to bed every night at 7 but god knows what time he will be up in the morning - then it messes with all his naps that day. I tend to stick with awake times rather than nap times - so if he only has a 30 min nap I don't keep him up til he would have had his second nap, but instead put him down when he starts showing tired signs (after about 2 - 2.5 hours-ish). This usually prevents any overtiredness or epic nap lengths and keeps the routine a bit better. In terms of bedtime I think it just sounds like she doesn't want to be in the cot on her own and wants to be with mum and dad having fun! I would get back into a good bedtime routine and focus on getting her in her cot at 7pm. Even if you have to sit in with her until she falls asleep for a few days it will be worth it in the long run as you can gradually start moving away from her and leaving the room (hopefully!). Without the consistency of a routine and a consistent bed time - it's gonna be hard for her to know when it's time to go to sleep - other than going off when you go to sleep which is a lot later! If you struggle with 7, you could always work backwards to ease her in. Bedtime routine at 9:30 and goes into cot when you go to bed at 10pm for example. Then sneak it earlier and earlier as she adjusts, and gradually remove your presence as she falls asleep too. Sorry loads of suggestions here but just thinking off the top of my head! I am a bit of a stickler for a bedtime routine as our DS was a pain early doors and it definitely pays off in the long term

Sorry should have clarified, we do awake times too I more meant that after only 30 minutes asleep it was difficult to keep her awake for 2.5 hours. We wanted to try 2 naps yesterday so I wanted to keep her up as I was assuming that she would nap for around 1-1.5 hours so I didn’t want her to then be awake for ages before ‘bedtime’ at 7.
In terms of the cot, we had been doing pretty much what you suggest but it was taking an hour+ to get her to sleep with us in the room and then she would wake every twenty minutes crying for us until we went to bed. She would then wake a lot overnight and I was putting this down to her being so distressed from bedtime.
It just feels like we keep swapping one issue for another and we have to choose the least worst option!