DS is 16 weeks (currently having growth spurt, but this has been going on ages), and we have had this issue for about 5 weeks now. I was thinking it would sort itself out, but if anything it's getting worse.
We (very) roughly follow GF routine, and he is very happy with it, no probs going the lengths of time suggested, and before current growth spurt was sleeping 4-6 hours at night before a quick feed and another hour or two. Obviously he is currently feeding a bit more frequently due to growth spurt, and is going roughly 3 hourly, day and night.
Anyway, he is currently having (approx) 45 mins sleep in the morning, 2-2 1/4 hours at lunch and about 30 mins in the afternoon (about 3.5 hours in total). Throughout the day he is ready for bed at pretty much 2 hours on the dot, and is reasonably good at napping (lots of shhing, patting, usually a pram walk for lunch nap so I exercise!).
However, after the afternoon nap he has a short feed, a play about, a bath and another feed. this whole process takes anything from 1hr 45mins to 2hrs, and at the end is he not remotely tired. If we try to put him down he screams and screams and screams, but he is quite happy to sit in his bouncy chair with us, being entertained, so presumably not overtired. He is generally awake for anything up to another 2 hours (so 4 hours in total), and sometimes he will have another feed in this time, sometimes not. He then tends to suddenly get completetly overtired, have minor hysterics and then have a sleep in his pram carrycot before I give him a feed at 10:30/11pm and put him in his cot. He settles perfectly easily after this feed.
This evening awake period is getting longer and longer and longer, and he is getting more difficult to settle every night - some nights he hasn't had any sleep at all by the time I give him his last feed (I give him it a bit earlier if he is clearly not going to settle before it), so he takes a tiny feed, falls asleep, and wakes 2-3 times in the night rather than his previous once!
I know he's still quite young, but I would like to begin thinking about the bath, BF and bed thing actually being linked to sleep, rather than another 2 hours playing.
So, what would you do? Give him his bath later and risk him getting overtired? Abandon the bath until he's going to bed at a more sensible time? try cutting out the afternoon nap? Cut/increase his daytime naps?
I know that in the grand scheme of things this isn't a major issue, but I'm thinking that if I start to think about it now, we might be able to sort out a bed time for him at some point in the next month or two, and begin to move towards reclaiming our evenings (because he requires entertainment in the evenings, DP and I don't particularly get to spend much time together, which is absolutely fine in the short term, but I would like to begin to see a time when we might be able to hold a conversation!)
Any ideas appreciated! And apologies for mammoth post.