Increased awake time but not sleeping longer at night

[pumpkinpie1]

My textbook/touchy almost 6 month old has recently had an increase in awake time to about 2 1/2 hours. The problem is she's still sleeping the same or less at night so she's getting only about 13 hours of sleep all day instead of the 14 or 15 she got before.

Yesterday's schedule -

7:00 am Wake and E
9:15 - 10:45 S
1:15 - 2:15 S
5:00 - 5:30 S - got caught out and got home late, this is often a tough nap
7:15 Wind down routine - lotion, feed, change
7:50 Night S
10:00 Dream feed
3:00 am NW for feed, hard to get back to sleep
4:20 - 7:00 am S

She gets cranky in the evenings but she's not hard to get to sleep. We do shush/pat and have since she was about 3 months. I wonder if we should transition her to a 2 nap schedule, the problem is we can't reliably get her to sleep for 2 hours during naps. We've tried extending her using techniques on this site but it doesn't always work.

Help me experts! Thank you!

[jessmum46]

Yes work toward two naps - she doesn't need to be able to sleep two hours to do so!  What she needs is her A time extending a bit more to help you eliminate the catnap.  My DD never did 2h naps, always 1h30 maximum so our early two nap routine on an ideal day (pretty much never, but hey!) was

WU 6.30
Nap 9.30-11
Nap 2-3.30
BT 6.30

Does that help?

[pumpkinpie1]

Do you think she's ready for two naps at 6 months? It seems like she just dropped her fourth nap. Her nap times really vary, today they were only 1:15, 50 and 30 minutes!

[jessmum46]

Those 1h15 and 50 minute naps are often due to UT - she's not tired enough to sleep any longer!  DD was all done and dusted with the 3-2 by 6 months, for our BW babies here anything in the 5-7 months range seems usual x

[pumpkinpie1]

I've been trying to extend her awake time but she seems to get overtired easily. Here was our schedule yesterday -

7:00 A
9:30 - 10:50 Nap 1
1:20 - 2:30 Nap 2
5:15 - 5:45 Nap 3 (cried going down)
I tried to put her down at 7:20 so she'd settle to sleep around 7:30 but she was really fussy until 7:45 pm
7:45 Night sleep

Ideally I'd like to do 7pm-7am (she does 1 night feed around 4 or 5 and is up for about 45 minutes total) but the times just aren't lining up. Should I wake her earlier from one of her good naps or cut her cat nap short?

Thank you!

[jessmum46]

I think her catnap is on the way out looking at that - you had two UT length naps then catnap resistance, then a bit of BT resistance because you got the catnap. Work on pushing her A time slowly towards 3h and some days you'll be able to drop the CN in favour of early bedtime, or just AP a tiny catnap if she won't quite make it x

[pumpkinpie1]

Thank you for your responses!

That's the thing...it seems like when she has a late cat nap she's harder to get down for a good night's sleep! She did 2:40 awake time today so I'm hoping we're on our way! AP means accidental parenting, right? That's tough because she's so touchy about sleep. She won't sleep in the carrier or stroller anymore and she really fights taking a nap in the car seat.

[jessmum46]

It can be a bit messy for a few weeks but it does sort itself out in the end