last nap of the day - help

[shem2005]

My DD is nearly 4 months old, we are on 4 hour EASY but it is a little different because she generally only stays awake for 1 hr 20 mins. The problem we are having at the moment is with her last nap of the day, i know it is supposed to be a catnap and that is what DD is doing and not amount of shh/pat will extend it, the problem is that then she is awake too long before bed because of her short awake time.

Yesterday our day was:

E  7.00am
S  8.20am
E  11.00am
S  12.20pm
E  2.45pm  (we had 20 mins of activity before this feed)
S  3.15pm

She then woke at 5pm, but because she goes to bed at 7pm (which we love) we tried shh/pat because there was no way she could last 2 hours. We eventually got her up at 6pm.

Does anyone have any ideas on how we can work this? Should we just deal with it until her awake time increases?

[Meg's Mom]

Have you tried or though of putting her down earlier then 7pm?

Only other thing i can think of is to try a longer wind down before the catnap which will extend the A time (you could try this for all naps) - even 10min may make a difference.

Last suggestion would be to try wake to sleep and see if you can catch her before she wakes at the 45min mark.  If you need, i can give you some examples for the tech.

Hope this helps.