Help! 7mo naps late in the day

[justwantobeamum]

My ds1 is 7 months. He slept well as a newborn until about 4 months. He then star

Sorry he hit my phone and posted!

he then started catnapping and waking more often through the night.

his sleep has been awful the past few weeks although slightly better the last couple of nights.

im really struggling with naps. Today we’ve had 22 mins this morning, then 15 mins at lunch time. He then gets so tired around 3/4pm. He’s then slept 2.50- 3.40pm in the car seat, woke, I fed him and he fell back asleep on me and is still sleeping now at 4.40. This is a regular occurrence. Tiny naps all day that I cannot extend or get him back to sleep, then shattered 3/4pm has a big sleep then I think affects night!

help! What can I do? Clueless (and tired) FTM.

oh if I wake him he’s grumpy rubbing his eyes all evening. He’s in such a deep sleep I’ve tried to move/make noise to wake him and he opens his eyes and goes back to sleep.

You need to focus on shorter awake times, not longer naps.

As a general rule, your wake window (the time from waking from one nap and being asleep at the next nap) should be

• Double the previous nap length
• Plus or minus 15 mins, depending on daily variation in tiredness
• Not more than 2h until naps are consistently over 90m

So

• for 20 min naps, your wake window is 40 mins. I'd start working on getting baby to sleep after 25 mins awake to allow for baby being asleep between 25-55m (the plus/minus 15 mins) from last waking.
• for 30 min naps, your wake window is 60 mins. I'd start working on getting baby to sleep after 45 mins awake to allow for baby being asleep between 45-75m (the plus/minus 15 mins) from last waking.
• for 45 min naps, your wake window is 1h30m. I'd start working on getting baby to sleep after 1h15m mins awake to allow for baby being asleep between 1h15-1h45m (the plus/minus 15 mins) from last waking.
• for 1h15m min naps, your wake window is 2h (not more than 2h until naps are longer than 90m) . I'd start working on getting baby to sleep after 1h45m mins awake to allow for baby being asleep between 1h45-2h from last waking.

You get the idea...

Naps lengthen naturally when baby isn't sleep deprived

@FATEdestiny thank you! I will definitely try this.

For the lunchtime nap, I just used to let her sleep on me as it meant much longer sleeps.

My LO slept like this until around 12 months, 3 naps consistently, morning and post lunch time naps were always short, then she'd have a longer one just before tea. It is tiring but sorry to say, fairly normal I think for that age. It will get easier, he should soon drop the 3rd one and have 2 longer am and pm ones. Hang in there