7 month old treating bed time as a nap

[Eagerlywaiting1990]

My baby is a notorious cat napper and has only ever napped for 30 mins at a time...bar the very odd occasion. As lovely as longer naps would be, im not too bothered as she wakes happy and is developing well. Recently however she has started treating bedtime as a fourth nap and fully waking after 30 mins for at least 2 hours.
Wake windows for the day are usually 2hrs 30/45 mins and 3 hrs/3hrs 15 mins at bed time.
Please help. Im feeling so frustrated. This has just started happening this week but is happening most nights

How many naps does she have in the day?

How many naps is she having now? The answer is most likely too many naps now and needs to drop one to have enough sleep pressure for the night

She has 3 naps although I have inconsiatently been capping the third at 15 minutes and in hindsight that does seem to help at least some of the time.
I just worry that if I give her two naps she'll just treat bed time as the third. How could I avoid that?

She will be too tired to treat bedtime as a nap. The reason she is doing it now is that she isnt all that tired at bedtime and so wakes up quickly.

Definitely worth a try. Thanks ladies. Ill report back

Do you mean your baby only has 9 awake hours per day? Expecting 15 hours of sleep is on the very high end, so she’s probably just not tired enough for a night sleep then. if her night sleep is still later this extra nap, she might just be telling you that she needs less sleep than you’re trying to get her to take. A later bedtime often works better for younger babies anyway so an extra nap and later bed time may well be more appropriate.

@toastofthetown no certainly not. She usually wakes at 8am and goes to bed around 8pm with an hour and a half sleep in naps? So 10.5 I guess. That seems a lot for a baby of her age compared to the naps other babies are having

I'd move to 2 naps or move bedtime later if 3 naps is preferably. She's getting so much sleep at night, she won't need long naps - mine only ever did 30 min naps til she went to 1 nap, and now we have to wake her from her nap...

I did two naps yesterday and brought bed time forward to compensate but it didnt work so I think we maybe need 2.5 naps at the minute as she can't manage longer than 2.45/3 hour wake windows and isnt lengthening naps.

@Peonies12 thats good to hear she did eventually outgrow the 30 minute naps. I cant imagine it haha

In that case I’d do 2.5 naps but later bedtime. Average is 10-11 hours overnight so bedtime more like 8pm might mean theyre more tired to stay asleep

Ugh another fail. This is how today looked (bear in mind shorter wake windows since she was up until 11pm last night.

8.30am wake
10.30 - 11.30 nap 1
1.50-2.20 nap 2
5-5.10 nap 3
8.30 bedtime
9.00pm wide awake again

Bear in mind I can count on two hands how many naps have been longer than 30 mins since she was three months. Do we think thats what did it?
Theres no way she'll only manage two naps if she sleeps for 30 mins each time and bringing bedtime forward to compensate doesnt help. The longest wake window ive ever known her to do is 3.5 hours

If she can manage over 3 hours before bed surely she could manage that for the other wake windows? 2 hours before morning nap is too short. It sounds ridiculous but I would be getting her up earlier in the morning and trying to shift her whole day earlier. It worked well for mine to cap the night after 11 hours regardless of how much shes been up. And have a consistent morning wake time.

Yeah it was only 2 hours cause the night was so short with her getting to sleep at 11pm and being up at 8.30am....she was absolutely beat!
Currently trying to shift the day earlier by doing exactly that. Doesnt help that I need a foghorn to wake her haha