Short naps, early wake ups & struggling with longer wake windows

[Poulson90]

Our 6 month old goes to bed at 8 and sleeps through until anywhere between 12-3am. I resettle mostly without picking up unless she needs a feed.

We can eventually get her back to sleep in her cot but she’s just unsettled, kicking legs and rubbing eyes for 10+minutes until she wakes herself up - this can happen every 10- 45 minutes until we finally give in and get up for the day at around 5:30am-6am (although I think she’s happily get up at 4an most days 😂)

We had been trying to drop to 3 naps and following 2/2.5/2.5/3 but she’ll only nap for 30 -45 minutes at a time meaning we’d end up with an afternoon bedtime.

I don’t mind her needing a feed in the night but I’d love for her to be able to get back into a deeper sleep and wake a little later 😴

Is there a way out of this vicious cycle?!

My first one did this. Lots of short sleeps but few total hours of sleep cycles that were linked together (which is needed for deep restful sleep). I wouldn’t drop the third nap if her naps are so short personally, I would say she needs more sleep not less. I make that only 7 hours of continuous sleep on a good night. The difficulty resettling and short naps can be overtiredness. Is she self-settling to sleep? That helped a lot for us.