Nearly 5mo sleep cycles??

[FedUp196]

I’m a bit confused about this and can’t find much online... basically my baby can sleep for 10 hours at night so she obviously knows how to ‘link sleep cycles’, but during the day she’s started napping for pretty much exactly 40 mins every time and then waking up fully, suggesting she’s only sleeping for one cycle and can’t self-settle?? In the past she has slept for 1, 2, even 2.5 hours during the day (never consistently or in any kind of routine), but now 40 mins seems to be our lot! Anyone experienced this and any advice? Thanks!

If this is a new thing it may well be the four month sleep regression. Unfortunately it affects naps first, then moves onto night time sleep. So if it is I wouldn't be surprised if the nights started to become broken soon.
It's mostly a question of waiting it out - but you can try different ways of helping them to link their sleep cycle during the day (wake to sleep method, or shh pat etc). Essentially, they need to fall asleep where they say asleep. So of you're feeding or rocking to sleep then they will need that to do another cycle.

Sounds normal.

I would stop worrying about linking sleep cycles.

And it's never been true for us that baby will need more rocking if they were rocked to sleep initially.

Just go with the flow and let baby do as baby wants in my view