What to do when the second nap is short

Ask Sally · the column

The first thing I’ll say is this. Naps are a beast.

If you’ve been following me for a while or you’ve listened to the Nap Trapped podcast, you’ve probably heard me say that before. In fact, the nap brain and the night brain may as well be two completely different parts of the brain. That’s why I always start by teaching independent settling at bedtime and overnight first. Nights are where babies are naturally primed for sleep. Once we’ve built that skill, we can start transferring it to daytime sleep.

If your nearly 7 month old is taking a lovely first nap but that second nap keeps falling apart, I promise you’re not alone. This is one of the most common questions Bec and I answer inside Camp Snooze.

A 7 month schedule, roughly

• 7:00am Wake and milk
• 7:30am Breakfast (if applicable)
• 9:30 – 10:15am Nap 1
• 11:00am Milk
• 11:30am Lunch
• 12:45 – 2:15pm Nap 2
• 3:00pm Milk
• 5:00 – 5:30pm Nap 3
• 5:30pm Dinner
• 6:30pm Milk
• 7:00pm Into cot

For context, milk feeds here are either both breasts or 180 to 240ml (6 to 8oz) if bottle feeding. Many babies at this age are also still having one or two overnight feeds when we first begin, so don’t feel like your baby is behind if that’s still your reality.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking.

“A 90 minute nap? Sally, my baby barely makes it past 32 minutes!”

I know.

The majority of babies I work with don’t arrive taking beautiful long naps. Many are chronic catnappers. Some only contact nap. Others will happily sleep for 30 minutes on the dot and pop awake looking like they’ve had the best sleep of their life.

So please don’t look at the schedule and think your baby is expected to magically do that tomorrow. We build towards it.

Some babies are still having fully assisted naps. Some are self settling but need the second half of the nap rescued. Others are learning to link their sleep cycles, while some are simply having an off day.

None of those mean you’re doing anything wrong.

So what do we do when the nap falls short?

We don’t throw the whole day away. Instead, we let the nap that’s just happened guide the rest of the day.

Let’s say your baby goes into the cot at 12:45pm, falls asleep around 1:00pm and wakes at 1:30pm. You head back into the room, the white noise is still on, it’s lovely and dark, and you give them every opportunity to go back to sleep until 2:15pm. But today, it just isn’t happening.

That’s okay.

Even if they don’t fall back asleep, you’ve still done something really valuable. You’ve protected the nap opportunity. You’ve kept them in a calm, low stimulation, pitch black environment and given them every chance to link that sleep cycle. Sometimes that’s all we can ask of them that day.

Now we simply adjust the rest of the day.

Rather than aiming for a 5:00pm third nap because that’s what was written on the original schedule, we work from when they actually woke. On this schedule, the wake window between naps 2 and 3 is around 2.5 hours. So if they woke at 1:30pm, your next nap would be around 4:00pm, finishing around 4:30pm before a 6:30pm bedtime.

The exact same principle applies if the first nap is shorter.

Let’s say your baby sleeps from 9:30am until 10:00am. You stay in the room until 10:15am hoping they’ll drift back off, but today’s just not the day. Rather than stretching until 12:45pm because that’s what the schedule says, we’d simply bring nap 2 a little earlier. That might look like a 12:30pm start instead.

The schedule isn’t there to trap you. It’s there to guide you.

A 10 month day, as another example

• 8:00am Breakfast
• 9:30 – 11:00am Nap 1
• 12:00pm Lunch
• 1:30pm Milk
• 2:00 – 3:30pm Nap 2
• 7:00pm Milk
• 7:30pm Bed

Now imagine nap 1 finishes early because life happened. Maybe you had swimming. Maybe you had daycare drop off. Maybe your toddler had somewhere to be.

Instead of sticking rigidly to the clock, we’d use the wake window.

If nap 1 finishes at 10:00am, we’d count three hours forward and aim for nap 2 at 1:00pm. If your baby wakes at 3:00pm, bedtime is around 7:00pm. If they sleep until 3:30pm, bedtime naturally shifts back to 7:30pm using the four hour wake window.

You can probably see the pattern now. The wake windows simply help us work out when the next sleep should be based on when they actually woke. It’s not a perfect system because babies aren’t robots, but it’s the one that will minimise overtiredness while keeping the day moving in the right direction.

There is one exception

The first nap of the day.

If your baby wakes at 6:30am one morning and 6:55am the next, I’m still anchoring in that same first nap time. There’s usually still a little overnight sleep pressure hanging around, making that first nap the easiest one to achieve.

More importantly, I’m always thinking about protecting you from early rising. If we start bringing that first nap earlier every time your baby wakes a little early, we can accidentally reinforce those earlier mornings by asking them to sleep again too soon. I don’t want that for you or your baby.

So while the rest of the day can flex, that first nap usually stays anchored.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a perfect formula for naps.

Some days your baby will surprise you with a glorious two hour sleep. Other days they’ll wake after 35 minutes and refuse to go back. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed and it doesn’t mean the schedule isn’t working. It simply means you’ve got a little troubleshooting to do.

Remember, schedules are there to guide you, not trap you. Life happens. Naps go off script. Babies get sick, teeth pop through, you have appointments, older siblings need to be somewhere. Two things can be true. We can aim for consistency while also adjusting the day that’s actually unfolding in front of us.

Our goal is simply to minimise overtiredness, protect bedtime, keep your baby’s body clock heading in the right direction and make tomorrow just a little easier than today.

Sally x

Ask Sally is my weekly column, where I answer the questions that land in my inbox and DMs. If there is something you are navigating with your baby’s sleep, send me your question. Yours might be the next one I answer.

Written by Sally Woods, internationally certified sleep consultant and former paediatric nurse.