8 month old struggling with 2 naps

[Milkshake93]

Hello Mumsnet,

First time posting but long time reader.
First time Mum to an almost 8 month old. LO has always struggled with sleep but has recently improved. Self-settles to sleep for all naps and bedtime. Would love any help/advice/reassurance.

We have recently moved from 3 to 2 naps. Everything was going ok and then the clocks changed and we can't seem to get back on track. We have multiple night wakes usually 9.30, 11.00, 1.30, 3.00 and then wakes between 5 and 5.30 and we try and resettle her until 6.30, keeping her in the dark, with white noise. This has varying degrees of success but we consistently 'start the day' at 6.30. First nap is usually 9.30-10.30 (sometimes earlier if she wasn't successfully resettled). 2nd nap is 1.45-3.15. This is where it all goes wrong. If naps aren't long enough we can't reach a suitable bedtime We would ideally like her to have a later bedtime around 7.30/8pm as 6/6.30 bedtime is too early. Getting her to a later bedtime would mean a very long last wake window which doesn't work. So, we have tried using bridging naps but they just seem to ruin sleep further. How long should the last WW be after a bridging nap?

She can only stay away 3/3.25 hours between naps but we just can't seem to comfortably make it through to bedtime. Also, if naps are slightly shorter one day this is a nightmare for bedtime.

Any help or advice would be amazing, because I am feeling totally lost.

Thank you 😊

Quick advice: drop the morning nap, keep her going until after lunch (will be hard at first) and she'll sleep well in the afternoon (maybe 2 hrs or a bit more), then she'll be able to go a bit longer until bedtime. Mine had dropped the morning nap by that age.

Is she eating enough before bed? She should be able to sleep through. Don't attend every sniffle in the night- see if she'll self settle. It's hard and I sympathise. Teething can get in the way too, so make sure you have things to soothe for that x

She has a decent 'dinner' before bed and then feeds 30 mins before bedtime. Sometimes feeds are admittedly a bit short as she is sometimes quite frantic (EBF). She only feeds twice in the night the rest of the wakes we just settle her but try not to pick her up.

It would be a very unusual paediatrician indeed who recommended one nap by eight months. That is very developmentally unusual.

Thanks so much for the advice. She is very tired by 9.30 so I'm not sure that would work for us right now but definitely something to consider in the future.

Can you shorten the second nap to an hour? Until 2:45, then the third nap can do 4:45-5:15/5:30?

I found with mine at that age that it didn’t matter if they had a nap fairly “close” to bedtime they would still fall asleep to bed as normal, but appreciate that’s not always the case!

She won't fall asleep before 3 hours awake time..she is such a little pickle. That's why we thought about the little bridging nap but don't think that's really helping.