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I'm sorry! Maybe it was too early?
My LO is usually a poor napper...maybe one or two 20-30 min naps during the day. She wasn't feeling well when I picked her up from daycare and she napped for 3 hours when we got home. Then she played for a bit and then we put her down for bedtime at 8:30. She woke up at 12:30 this morning when she usually sleeps through the night...ahh! She is playing with her toys and crawling around while I'm on the couch!

I would have done the same as you except that there would be no more napping after she woke up at 3pm. What time are her naps, in general? Maybe you can start omitting her third (the 5pm one) nap? And then have a 7pm bedtime?

@caffeinated: "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" says that the last nap should be before 3pm. Your LO's first two naps sound spot on. Perhaps try a super early bedtime? It might sound totally nuts, but my LO wakes up from her afternoon nap at around 2-2:30pm and her bedtime is 5:30-6pm every. single. day. When I tell people this, their jaws drop. But she has to wake up every morning at 5:30am so I HAVE to get her down early.

oh and when charlie was younger and we put him to bed later, he always woke up earlier. he always did better with an earlier bedtime.

olive is a little more flexible, but she does best with an earlier bedtime too.

I agree with @Rubies and @Mrs. Bee. Starting at 4 months old, my LO would downright refuse to take a nap if I tried to put him down after 4pm. So if his last nap ended at 3-ish I would put him to bed at 5:30 at the earliest. Similar to @Rubies, my LO regularly goes to bed before 6:30 and he clocks way more sleep the earlier we put him down. In fact, oftentimes when he goes to bed at 5:30 he sleeps 12+ hours straight!

Fighting sleep is rarely an issue of under tiredness unless your LO takes whopper naps or you're using super short wake times.

@caffeinated: it is really hard for a lot of babies to nap that late. at 6 months, 2 hours is a good awake interval, so maybe she is dealing with that shift from being awake 90 minutes to 120 minutes.

dropping that third nap might mean that her 2 other naps might get longer as well!

I don't have advice, but I do have to say that if I put my son to bed later he usually wakes earlier. Yesterday, we had a similar problem where he woke from his last nap at 3:30 -- his usual bedtime is 7, 7:30 and his max awake time is 2 hours. I went for a jog with him at 5 but he fell asleep at 5:30 and slept til 6. Which resulted in an 8 p.m. bedtime. I once put him to bed early at 6:30 and he woke crying every 45 minutes until 10 and demanded to be fed at 10. I'd like to get him on a set nap schedule, but he only naps for 30 minutes at a time, maybe 45 minutes. It's exhausting.

@caffeinated: I promise, it'll get better! Maybe she's going through a growth-spurt? Teething? Who knows??? One day at a time...

@caffeinated: Yeah, change sucks! My youngest is also 6 months as well and he usually naps 2x a day now but sometimes still 3x a day depending on when he woke up in the morning and what time and how long he napped for for his first and second nap. The latest I will nap him is around 5pm and I do try to wake him by 7pm so he'll still be able to make his 9:30pm bed time. I just go with it since I stay home and hope for the best! He only had two naps today (1 hour at 11am and almost 3 hours at 3pm) and he didn't go to sleep until 9:30pm. Yeah, really late with a 3.5 hour awake time (he usually has a 2 hour max limit) but he hung in there, rubbing eyes and all. We have late wake up times though; but sometimes he'll wake up the same time his big brother wakes up which is around 7:30-8am. Or his big brother wakes him up by talking so loud in the hallway like he did this morning. This was around 9am.

Our schedule is all over the place. I'm not very consistent but I do go with the flow and somehow it works. My youngest is also pretty chill which I think helps.

Don't forget that 6 months is a big milestone for our LOs! Teething seems big (although not for us yet) and growth spurt, sitting up, etc. Hopefully it's only temporary and that she'll go back to sleeping better again. Keeping my fingers crossed that's the case for you! Hang in there!

@caffeinated: 11?! that's insane! The latest for us I think was about 9 pm, and that was bad! We ended up switching to a 8:30-8:30 schedule for a while.