Reply To: Help with daytime naps

[Aditi Shukla]

Hi Emma,

Thanks again for all the suggestions! We’re working on slowly implementing them. We’ve moved our wake-up time to between 6:30-7am and we’re trying to get her down for bedtime between 6:30-7pm, both of which seem to be positive changes and more in line with her circadian rhythm.

We had a question related to bedtime, but regarding her nap schedule. It’s typically quite difficult to get our daughter down for her last nap. Our goal is to wake her up from this nap somewhere around 5:30pm. We’re able to put her down for her last nap but she usually wakes up within minutes. Sometimes she cries, but often she just lays in her crib with her eyes open, looking content. In the past, we’ve been able to get her to take this nap if we let her take a contact nap.

To give you an idea of her nap schedule, this is what it approximately looked like yesterday:

Nap 1: 8:10am for 1 hour, 40 minutes

Nap 2: 11:00am for 1 hour

Nap 3: 1:00pm for 40 minutes

Nap 4: 3:00pm for 40 minutes

Nap 5: 5:00pm on and off awake and fussy

Then we started her bath around 5:45, with the goal of ending our bedtime routine around 6:30. However, she was very fussy after the bath and seemed very tired—it seemed to us this was because she slept very little in her last nap.

We have a few questions. We’re wondering whether there’s something off about her nap schedule, like whether we need to drop this nap or change something about our strategy for getting her down. Or should we try to get her to do this nap by letting her contact nap? If she wakes up and just lays in her crib with her eyes open, should we just let her be or should we try to put her down again?

Thanks again,

Aditi