Nap transitions at 9 months, help!

[AJ2024]

My DD is 9 months now and we are still struggling with daytime naps. I've read by this age she should be on 2 naps a day.

Now last week I thought we were getting somewhere because she would sleep 11 hours at night (10pm-9am) and would take 2 naps of around 1.5 hours. Totalling to around 14 hours sleep all together.

But this week shes gone back to 8 hours of night time sleep (11pm-7:30/8am) and 4 naps per day mostly consisting of 40 mins. Maybe 1 hour if I'm present to sooth her back to sleep at the 30ish minute mark.

She feeds well and takes a bottle fine and we have a routine. Its just that the other day, she woke 2 hours earlier than usual and everythings just gone to shit from there, I'm finding it really hard to get momemtum back! I'm wondering where I'm going wrong?

I have tried to ditch the last nap of the day but this has resulted in more night wakings and over tiredness. I've tried joining the last nap with nighttime sleep and that was just a bad idea lol.

Maybe its normal at this age? All I know is I'm tired and lacking baby free time, and not getting much done during the day and I'm exhausted by bed time😅 please advise x

how does baby fall asleep and how do you handle wakes?

I would be working on trying to move bedtime to get before 8pm latest at this age. The total wake time during the day is likely a lot.

I know it's so hard when early wake mess up the flow!

@BobbyDazzler11 Hi,
So I rock/pat to sleep. If she wakes up I will roll her on her side in her crib and pat her which usually takes 10-15 mins each resettle.

She can sleep a 3-4 hour stretch at night, but after that she can wake hourly. I shudder to think what time she will be awake if I give her a 8pm bedtime! She used to take 8 hours of nighttime sleep until I made a point of sending her back to sleep in the mornings where she'd happlily do another 3 hour stretch! But without that (sometimes unsuccessfully too) she would be up after 6-8hours of night time sleep.

Where do I start with trying to shfit the bedtime a little earlier? She went to bed at 1am last night and woke at 7am😅

1am ? what time is she having food ? and when is her last nap, it strikes me she must be having a very late nap to have a 1am bedtime ? Are you Spainish ?

@Neurodiversitydoctor she normally has food at 9am, 2pm, 7pm and a snack before bed. Plus bottles every 3 hours or so.

This last nap she takes at between 8:30pm/9pm is the one I'm desperately trying to get rid of. As in my OP I have tried skipping the nap all together or joining the nap to the bedtime sleep with no luck. I wanted to really aim for a 9pm-10pm bedtime.

@AJ2024 it will take some time to slowly make some changes but that bedtime is very late. even that last nap seems like a late bedtime and baby is likely overtired.

I would work on trying to get her to sleep without parental support so that she can sooth herself and this helps the rest, naps, night wakes etc.

my 9month old has the rough routine that can shift half hour usually forward or back based on wake time...

6.30am wake
9am - 10am nap
1 - 3pm nap
6.30pm bedtime

so wake windows are 2.5hrs, 3 hrs and 3.5hrs.
sometimes we do a longer nap in the morning if we have afternoon plans.