u/brotherno

My 7 month old used to wake hourly, and with help from a sleep consultant and pick up/put down method, he now only wakes 1-2 times per night. However, I’m struggling to stick to his nap schedule.

The sleep consultant wants me to stick to 2.45/4/4.5, which looks like:

6-6:15am wake (he often naturally wakes around 6)
9am nap 1 (1.5hr)
2:30pm nap 2 (1hr)
8pm bed time

The goal is 2.5hr nap time, but he has only been napping around 1hr10-1hr30 per day.

The issue with this schedule is that my boy only naps for 35-40 mins no matter where he is. I cannot rescue naps for the life of me, he will fight and scream for 20 minutes before I call it in and get him up and about. He simply cannot make it to that 2:30pm nap after only a 35 min nap that ends around 9:30am. He will always fall asleep in the car or pram around 12:30pm or if we’re home, become incredibly cranky and tired. This means I need to get him to nap again around 4pm so he can make it to his bed time of 8pm (sometimes it’s slightly earlier). I’m not interested in forking out more $ for the sleep consultant to just tell me to keep trying and that his naps will eventually consolidate (it’s been a month of trying and he’s only had one 1.5hr nap).

This means we’ve naturally fallen into a 3 nap schedule. The sleep consultant doesn’t want me to do this but on the days he has had three naps, his overnight sleep doesnt seem to be impacted yet.

Just wanting to get some thoughts on the following schedule until he’s able to better link his nap cycles:

2.5/3/3/4

6am wake
8:30am nap 1
12pm nap 2
3:30pm nap 3
7:45-8pm bed

Would love to hear some thoughts!

Thanks so much