Nap routine

[Olivebranch5]

I’d like to introduce some sort of nap routine so I’m popping her down at a similar time each day but because she wakes so early her naps are all of the place. On the first day of introducing a routine should I keep her awake until the first time I want her to sleep or does that make it harder for her to sleep?

How old is she?

Sorry I should have said! She’s just coming up for 6 months

Try the Huckleberry app, you can use it to track sleep for a few days and then it will recommend to you when you should put them down for naps based on when they woke up. It really helped me get my girl into a bit of a nap routine. I started using it around 6 months and she's now 10 months and still using it.

It's a good idea to have a consistent wake up time in the morning.

After that, routine at this age usually comes from consistent awake time window. So have a set and expected amount of time between waking from one nap and going to sleep for the next nap.

What awake window you use depends on several factors. Primarily how long baby sleeps for, their developmental stage and finally baby's personality. A useful general approximation at this age would be an awake window of approximately double the length of the preceeding nap (give or take 20 minutes or so) and to not be awake for longer than 2h. This is not an exact science though, it's just to give you an idea.