Naps and Nighttime Sleep - 6 months old

[EAB121]

Help please as I'm at my wits end. LO has been a good nighttime sleeper from about three months but over the last three weeks this seems to have nosedived and I'm now really struggling with the lack of sleep (I'm a single parent so don't have anyone to share the load unfortunately). Naps are only ever around 30 minutes long unless she's asleep on me when she does around an hour and a half if not longer. All the advice online says that LO should be dropping to two naps a day with wake windows of around 2.5 to 3 hours a day but we seem so far off this. I've tried everything recommended to extend naps in the crib but she will not have it and just seems knackered and whiny most of the time, which I don't want for her as I want her to enjoy awake time. Whether coincidence or not her nighttime sleep seemed to start struggling when I started to try extending naps so I'm just not sure what to do for the best; carry on with the 30 minute naps and hope that they naturally just extend or carry on with trying to extend naps and struggle through for the time being.

My lo didn't drop to 2 naps at 6 months old. Some do. Mine didn't do it till almost 8 months, and there was a bit of rough transition then.

At 6 months, I did.
9am sleep. Awake normally 1020/1030am.
1pm sleep awake 220/230pm
430/445pm sleep till 515m may allow little longer if other two naps bit pants.
745/8pm sleep.

Have a look at ways to lengthen naps on mums net. They will extend soon, but you may need to help intially.

If little one only doing 30mins naps you need to shorten the awake window.
Sounds like lo is overtired.

@EAB121 mine is 5.5 months and he is only JUST starting to extend one of his three naps per day to 1.5 hours. Dropping from 3 to 2 happens from 6-8 months, and they supposedly will do this on their own eventually. As an example, mine naps every 2-2.5 hours but I can see when he is tired, his last nap works out to be around 5pm which he automatically wakes up from after one sleep cycle. Two days ago, he had a two nap day, which his first nap was at 10.30 for 2 hours and then another at 3pm for just over an hour with an earlier bedtime (typically it's at 9 but it was at 8 that day, but we made him stay awake for as long as possible without going into meltdown), which is what I suspect his two nap schedule will look like.

I would recommend dropping regimented nap schedules and go with the flow with the three naps until your baby starts extending. Btw my baby's night time sleep has been so awful the past couple of months, are you working at all? Any help at all from anyone at all? My bedtime is the same as my baby where I can, it's all about survival at the moment..

Thank you. We seemed to do ok with wake windows of 1.5 hours then I tried to extend to 2 hours and that seems to be when the problems started. I'm going to just be led now by LO and see how it goes. I'm not working at the moment so at least can just relax during the day. Hopefully the nighttime sleep will sort itself out soon and we'll be down to just a waking or two a night.