in February 2024 Babies 🇬🇧

Very long last wake window, anyone else?

My daughter has a 3 hour first wake window, but the last two keep getting longer and longer to the point she is going to bed really late. If we skip the second nap, she is happily awake for 7 hours and goes to sleep easily after that. Based on my Google search (😅) I know that's not ideal. is anyone else in a similar situation? Or some tips on how to make this better for her? She is definitely tired 3 hours after waking up so I don't want to prolong that wake window really.

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If she’s happily awake and goes to bed easily and sleeps well overnight then why not drop to one nap?

I don't really pay attention to wake windows anymore but we've been on 1 nap for almost 3 months. The gap between waking from her nap and going to bed can sometimes be as long as 8 hours, depending on the length of her nap. I wouldn't stress pushing for a second nap if she doesn't need/want it.

Sounds like it’s time for 1 nap. We do between 3 & 4.5 hours now on the first wake window and 5+ for the second. It depends on what we’re doing but usually her nap is 11.30-1.30ish. Now they’re older they can cope better with being a little tired. Today we were out until lunchtime, went to sleeps at 12.40 and she is still asleep almost 2h later

Sounds like she is ready for one nap. I’d just follow her ques with it and if it seems like she doesn’t want a second nap, I would just try keeping her up and seeing what happens. We’ve been on 1 nap since 10 months and its just meant he has one really long 2-3 hour nap

I’m in a similar situation, my LG is starting to resist that second nap and just stays awake lol. Can I ask how long your babies sleep for? Are they still B/F and are they sleep trained? We are looking at the different options as at the moment my LG wakes up wanting comfort feeds and I’m exhausted!

@Kaz 1.5-2.5h usually. BF before the 1 nap and ‘sleep trained’ at 5 months as in we used the Ferber method so that she could go in her cot awake at night bcos she didn’t transfer without waking much of for those first 5 months but we didn’t do anything for naps. Those just fell into place once she could send herself off to sleep. If we do it in the go she’ll only sleep in the car or the pram for 25-40 mins so it has to be in the cot most of the time. We are still awake once in the night, sometimes twice. I just wait up to 10 mins at night to see if she’ll drift off on her own again. We don’t do anything too harsh anymore after the actual training period

@Kaz most often 2-2.5 hours. We weaned my little one off breastfeeding about 2 months ago and he has a big bottle of cows milk before bed now. We combined this with some really gentle sleep training as being back at work I just couldn’t go on with the nights we were having. He now sends himself off to sleep and when he wakes in the night can generally send himself back to sleep quite quickly now so we’ll always give it 10 ish minutes before going in unless he’s really unsettled. We’re still often on one wake up for a bottle of milk though. Like Emma, he will only sleep in his cot so it’s difficult to get a decent nap in when out. We sometimes end up going the whole day without a nap if we’re out for the day 🤦‍♀️ I do think all kids are so different though. Apparently I dropped all naps entirely before I was 1!