Does this sound like baby needs to drop a nap?

[RainbowCupcakesYum]

8 month baby, sleep trained so can fall asleep by himself at bedtime (no judgement please) with zero crying 95% of the time. Always still woken 2-3 times per night for feeds as not night weaned due to him not being well established with solids yet. However, he’s recently been waking even more, every 1.5-2.5 hours. Last night he was awake for 48 mins at 3am before I gave in and fed again when I normally wouldn’t. He wasn’t that upset, just grizzled, but he kept lying down to try and sleep but would pop back up after 5 mins or so and get frustrated. Feeding him made him drowsy enough to go back off. Is this a sign he needs to drop a nap? Current schedule is as follows:

6.30am - wake
8.50-9.35am - nap (wake window 2 hr 20)
12.10pm-1.30pm - nap (wake window 2 hr 40)
4.10-4.40pm - nap (wake window 2 hr 40)
7.30pm - bedtime (wake window 2 hr 50)

He still goes to sleep really easily for all of his naps most of the time. Occasionally puts up a fight for the 3rd but not consistently. I normally have to wake him for every nap though to prevent bedtime being pushed too late. Before I started waking him, he would do a long morning nap and a short 2nd nap and then be overtired at bedtime. I’m not sure if he’s able to do 2 long naps as per a 2 nap day but I also haven’t tried.

Anyone have any advice about dropping to 2 naps and is increased night waking a sign?

I’d try and drop the first nap but slide the second one back a bit. And I’d consider giving supper to try and stop/reduce the night waking.

Mine always dropped to two around that age. I’d try to push back the first and second nap a bit then drop the afternoon one. Mine have always slept 40ish minutes at 9ish then up to 2 hours for the lunch nap 1ish -3.

@DustyLee123 we do dinner before bath and bed but he’s not super into food yet so sometimes doesn’t eat much. I think some of his night feeds are habitual now too so I plan on gently night weaning once I’m a bit more confident in his daytime calories as we’ve had weight issues in the past.

@Greenmoonset did you find your little ones struggled at first? I’m not sure how he’ll handle longer wake windows at the mo but hoping he’ll surprise me!

There is a regression around this time - we had an awful couple of months with wakes every hour and i had just gone back to work as well 😴

Re dropping the nap, we found that at the start it would be 2 naps for a couple of days and then a 3 nap day to catch up. Then as DD got more settled in a 2 nap routine, the 3rd nap finally dropped completely.

@Sunnyshoeshine thanks, that’s reassuring.

What wake windows did you find work during the transition? I know it obviously varies baby to baby but just as a general idea

I also think it’s confusing to him that you sleep trained him to go to sleep but when he wakes up and cries you feed him. How does he know when you’ll wake up and be sleep trained and when he’ll wake up and you’ll feed him? I think you need to be consistent and try some night weaning too

I just looked back at huckleberry (DD is now 21months) and it looks like i was doing 3-3.5hrs wake windows? But it looks all over the place most days to be honest! I streched the afternoon wake window between last nap and bed the longest.

@ShirleyPhallus I agree but we’ve had weight issues in the past so I didn’t feel comfortable doing that straight away but he was waking every 45 mins for months before sleep training so 1.5-2.5 is still an improvement 😅

But unfortunately, sleep training really works when you’re consistent. Part of the issue is that he’s developing that feed > sleep association again so needing help to fall asleep during the night again.

id try doing the night feeds as dream feeds (pick maybe 2 feeds a night at 10pm then 2am? ) then sleep train him for all other wakings. Then you can gradually cut down on the 2am feed until it’s gone entirely