Wake up from naps?

[MommyMoulton]

DS is 8 months old and I am wondering if I should be waking him up from his naps. He is currently at or around a 3 to 3.5 hour A time. My issue is that if I let him sleep as he pleases for his naps, then follow cues for his next nap, it makes his next nap very late and sometimes(actually most of the time) its another long nap. This results in a very short time for his last A time. Usually it is difficult to get him to eat solids and drink a full BT bottle and get into bed by 730pm. So he is usually up late. Here is our EASY

7am 4-6oz bottle
830am solids
10-1030 Nap (1.5-2hours)
12noon 4-6 oz bottle
1pm solids
3-330pm Nap (1.5-2hours)
5(sometimes even 530) solids
7pm aim for 8oz bottle but usually only drinks 4 oz or less
715 Bath
730 BT, but usually its closer to 8 before he will tolerate being put in the crib.

He does STTN with 3-4 stirrs, whereby he may or may not cry out or babble until he finds his pacifier and goes back to sleep.

SHould I wake him up from his naps?
Thanks
Melissa

[creations]

Hi there
I suppose it depends if it's the short A time or the stimulating bath that are pushing BT late.
It maybe well work out for you to cap the pm nap at 1.5hrs to ensure a good A time to bed and enough time to fit in your evening routine.

If it was me I'd prob try tweaking a few other things first and let him continue with the naps as they are because the night sounds good so it looks like his sleep needs are being met in a balanced way (good days, good nights iyswim).
I can see that fitting in solids and milk is tricky though and the bath is late which could be quite stimulating just before bed. (Tracy said in her Toddler book, which starts at around the 8 month mark, that a bath before bed can be too stimulating but I know a lot of people, including me, stick with the bath just before bed)

My LO used to wake at 5pm and be in bed asleep at 6.45-7pm (usually 6.45), a VERY short last A time!
He had a larger meal at lunch so the last solids meal was quite light, helping to maintain the final milk of the day.  Our evening looked like this:
5pm wake up
5.15 solids, light meal
5.45 evening bed time routine begins with one calm kids TV show
6.05 teeth, bath, dressed for bed
6.35 milk (ideally teeth brushing should be after milk though)
6.45 sleep

You might consider tweaking the evening routine to get it all in before BT gets late, or moving bath to between solids and milk?  It was all a strictly timed thing in our house to get through the evening routine before bed.
Just ideas

[Shiv52]

Here we needed at least 3 hours to bedtime to not get UT nonsense.  If we had a 5pm wake up we'd have had to do bedtime at 8pm at the earliest especially after a 1.5/2 hour nap. 

I kept with the longer day (my LO tended not to do more than 11/11.5 hour nights anyways) and longer naps and just did the slightly later daytime. 

If you'd prefer to keep the 7.30 bedtime I'd cut that last nap to 1 hour and then he should be ready for bed after the shorter A time.  If you want to keep the naps how they are it is totally fine to do 7am wake up and 8pm bedtime with such good naps.

[londonlady]

We're cutting the last nap back a bit MM. On school run days I have to do that anyway, as I have to be out the door at 3pm so I get her up after about 1hr - 1hr 15 nap.  On other days, I let her go a bit longer but usually no more than 1.5hrs to try and preserve BT.

Rach. x