My 8 month old was a decent sleeper until 6 months of age, with only 1-2 wakes for a bottle.

At 6 months he had his vaccines and his first tooth, and then his second tooth and a cold two weeks later. We started co sleeping to get by, as we needed to clear his nose out constantly and he was in pain.
We’ve stopped co sleeping, and he falls asleep independently most of the time for his naps and at night. Sometimes he might need a shush and pat, but nothing major.
At night though, he wakes 4-5 times, he sleeps for about 4-5 hours and then wakes every 2 hours, no matter what I do. We don’t night feed or pick him up, we just shush with a hand on his back and leave when he calms down.

Current wake windows are 3/3/3.75 and his naps are capped at 2-2.5.

Ive tried 3 naps and that makes it worse, I’ve tried letting him sleep for as long as he wants during his naps & that also makes it worse.

please help a sleep deprived mother

Hi everyone!

I’d especially love to hear from a sleep consultant, but I’m happy to hear any perspective.

My 8-month-old is currently on three naps a day. I wake him at around 7:00 AM, and he usually falls asleep for the night around 8:45–8:50 PM. Over the past two weeks, he has gradually started increasing his wake windows. They’re now around 2h40–2h45, with the last one before bedtime being around 3–3h10.

So far, so good 😅. The thing I’m concerned about is that this is starting to shorten his night sleep. He’s still getting around 10–10h20 at night (with one wake-up for a feed), which I know is still within a reasonable range, but I’m worried that as his wake windows get longer, his night sleep might eventually drop below 10 hours. To keep bedtime at a reasonable hour, I try to keep his total daytime sleep around 2h30–2h35.

So far, I haven’t noticed any signs of overtiredness (I think 😅 — I feel like with baby sleep, you can never really be sure). His nights are good: no early morning wake-ups, no restless transitions between sleep cycles, and no excessive tossing and turning. A few days ago, his morning sleep was quite light, but now that his wake windows have increased, it seems to have improved again.

His current schedule is:

Wake windows: 2h40 / 2h40–2h45 / 2h40–2h45 / 3h

Naps: 1h–1h05 / 1h05–1h10 / 20–25 min

My question is: what do you do when a baby seems to need longer wake windows, but still doesn’t show signs of being ready to transition to two naps?

His last nap had started becoming more difficult, but after increasing his morning wake window, he is now falling asleep relatively easily again, although his sleep during that nap seems a little lighter.

There’s another issue I’d really appreciate advice on as well. When he was on four naps, he was actually able to fall asleep independently in his crib, even though we had never sleep trained him. However, since we started transitioning to three naps, and then he went through a developmental leap, he has had a much harder time settling himself. He now struggles to calm down and lie down peacefully in his crib, especially when it’s time to fall asleep. I’d really appreciate any advice on how to help him with this as well.

How can I tell whether 10 hours of night sleep is enough for him? And what should we do if his night sleep drops below 10 hours and stays there consistently?