Schedule question: Capping daytime naps at 13 weeks?
Context: My little guy is 13 weeks and a good sleeper. We’ve been following taking cara babies newborn and recently switched to 3-4 months for gentle sleep training. We’ve also have a smart crib (Cradlewise) that is magic at soothing him back to sleep. In the last week or so, i’ve been able to put him in fully awake at bedtime and he’ll fall asleep, and recently I can get a couple naps a day where he falls asleep independently (or with the crib bouncing him, i’m calling that independent enough).
Right now he wakes consistently at 7am, bedtime is between 7:30-8:30. I follow his cues and his wake windows have always been short but they’ve just gotten a bit longer and I’ve been trying to stretch them. They’re recently between 1-1.5 hours, 1.75 before bedtime.
Recently I discovered that if he sleeps 4-4.5 hours a day, then he sleeps through the night (once did a 9 hour stretch, but usually 6-7 hour stretches). Previous to this I was letting him sleep up to 2 hr naps during the day, or even extending short naps to 1-2 hours. Since his wake windows are so short, this was resulting in very little awake time during the day. I’ve tested this theory enough times to feel fairly confident that if baby sleeps >5 hours during the day he has more frequent night wakings, and if he sleeps <4.5 hours during the day he gives a solid first stretch of sleep.
Okay here’s the main question: Is it bad for me to be capping his naps and limiting daytime sleep at this age? He’s still on 5 naps a day because his wake windows are so short and I’m trying to maximize awake time. Some naps he naturally wakes up between 30min - 1hr, but in a contact nap he could easily go 2+ hours during the day if I let him. I find myself capping the last 2-3 naps of the day so that we stick to a consistent bedtime, and stay around 4.5 hours of daytime sleep. No matter what I do, I find that he consistently only sleeps 15 hours in a 24 hour period, and capping daytime sleep definitely helps improve his night sleep. I honestly just feel so guilty waking him up from the deep sleep of a contact nap, but I obviously prefer to sleep through the night.