Dropping the third nap

I think my little one is starting to transition away from the third nap. Lately, he’s been taking one long nap during the day, and it has become really difficult to get him down for a third nap. Sometimes he refuses it completely.

Today I managed to get him to take a third nap, but it was a real struggle. He woke up cranky and then didn’t go back to sleep until 8:30 p.m., even though his usual bedtime is 7 p.m.

This reminds me of when he was dropping the fourth nap, we had the same issue until we stretched his schedule to fit three naps. Now I’m not sure if he’s fully ready to drop to two naps, and I’m struggling to figure out how to space them out so he can make it to a 7 p.m. bedtime.

He’ll be 7 months in a week. Has anyone else gone through this transition? How does your little one’s sleep schedule look right now?

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Following because in a similar situation x

I spent a couple of weeks keeping an eye on his last nap but actually his first 2 wake windows were just naturally stretching too.

We went from a 7am wake up with a 9am first nap to a 9:30am nap very very quickly. Then he just started to stretch it even more.

I was making the error of cutting the first two naps short to jam the third nap in. So what I did for about a week is stretch the first two wake windows, let him sleep a little longer on those naps and then literally give him like 15 mins as a 3rd nap as long as it was before 5pm.
If this kid closes his eyes after 5pm even to blink then he won’t sleep 😂

Then we hustled!!! Me and my partner literally tag teamed for a good week to get him to his usual bedtime of 7:30pm. I did longer baths, lots of finger food to make dinner take ages, my partner took him out for a longer walk etc

It got to the point where his 2nd nap ended late enough where he couldn’t fit in his 3rd nap before 5pm and his wake windows stretched enough x

This baby is somewhere in between 3 and 2 it depends on what time he wakes in the morning. But my first baby dropped to two naps at 6 months, he did a shorter nap in the morning and a long one in the afternoon. If it's difficult to get baby to take a third nap then that probably means he is ready to drop it. Bedtime might need to be a little earlier whilst he's adjusting.

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