How can I extend baby’s naps?

[EmmaInParis]

My baby is 15 weeks old and for the last few weeks has mainly only been napping for about half an hour at a time. She used to do a nice long morning nap of about two hours but now rarely sleeps that long in the day. She’ll happily sleep in sling, swing, pram, crib, but none of them for very long. Bouncer doesn’t do it for her. Means she needs about four to five naps a day to make it comfortably to bedtime which is fine but doesn’t give me much chance to get anything done and I feel like I spend half my day trying to coax her to sleep. She’s usually happy enough when she wakes up but sometimes still yawning. Is there any way I can try to extend them? Or should I even be bothering and just accepting it for now? (I’ve read they don’t tend to consolidate naps til about 5 months old). Could this be part of the 4 month sleep regression? She hasn’t been too bad at night (touch wood) but then we have never really had long uninterrupted stretches. Four to five hours, tops, at the start of the night then waking every two to three hours after. That’s actually an improvement on a couple of weeks ago...

Any advice or insight appreciated.

You can try extending her wake periods, so just pushing her a little bit longer when she looks like she needs a nap to see if that helps.

You can also try slightly waking her towards the end of her sleep cycle to see if that will essentially reset her into a second sleep cycle. Or try and catch her when she's starting to wake and rock her to see her through from the end of one sleep cycle into the next.

But there is definitely an element of just waiting for them to get a bit bigger. Lots of short naps are normal at that age.

Multiple short naps are normal for this stage.

If you have the nap in something that moves, it means you can keep the movement going between sleep cycles to help them link.

Thanks for replying! She seems to nap even worse when we’ve accidentally pushed her beyond the usual times due to, well, life happening, so not sure about extending wake times, but will try the second tip! Also just good to know she may grow out of it on her own, I wasn’t sure whether that needed encouragement or would happen naturally

Thank you too @FATEdestiny - movement definitely used to help but now she wakes up after 30-45 mins in the swing, sling or pram even when we’re still moving Maybe I just need to ride it out! Thank you for confirming lots of short naps is normal, that’s good to know.