4 month old having short naps

[Mumsy87]

My now 4 month old is a cat napper during the day, 30 minutes at the most, you can almost set your watch to it. He’s been doing this for afew months now and nothing I do will get him to sleep longer.
I’ve made sure I’ve kept the awake window not to short or to long and I’ve been consistent in how I’m putting him down, in crib, dark room, white noise etc....but he still wakes!
I thought maybe that’s all he needs but he wakes up cracky and gets so tired as the day goes on. I think if he has longer naps he will be a happier baby plus I would like abit longer then 30 minutes break 😴 to get things done, entertain my 5 year old and have some me time.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙂

You usually need to help baby link one sleep cycle into another, at least until they are more consistantly linking sleep cycles.

What this means is being very attentive to baby at the tail-end of the nap. You want to catch baby at that point where he is just coming out of a deep sleep into a light sleep, but not properly woken up. This is often seen with a very small movement, it might be baby screws face up and grimaces, or shifts position slightly - maybe raises arms, moves head to one side or rolls onto side slightly.

If baby actually wakes up (which is usually evidenced by a cry) then you've missed the boat and you are unlikely to get baby back to sleep. But catch baby before the cry and then use your usual settling method to get back back to sleep. That might be dummy reinsert, a bit of patting or shushing or if baby is in a pram then a bit of back and forth movement.

Essentially baby needs to "practice" longer sleeps before they become established, this is helped along by you helping baby move from one sleep cycle into another more effectively.