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I am having trouble getting me 8 month old twin daughters to nap longer than 30 minutes. Since about 4 months old, their naps have become super short, from 30 minutes to an hour at the longest and I was putting them down for 4 catnaps a day until about 7 months old because they would be so tired. I bumped their bedtime up earlier to make up for the lost sleep during the day but it usually results in an earlier wake time and earlier naps, which still are about 30 minutes on the dot, now 3 times a day, as they are resisting the 4th nap.

I’m wondering if I should add the 4th catnap back in or just continue to bump the bedtime up. I’ve spoken to many other mothers who claim their child took 30 minute naps until they were crawling and walking and more tired. I’m not sure my girls will ever sleep longer because I’ve tried everything; shorter wake times, longer wake times, separate bedrooms for naps, back in the same bedroom for naps; keeping them in their cribs up to an hour even after they wake after 30 minutes, and so on and they still sleep for 30 minutes only. They wake up still tired so I’m assuming we have a self soothing issue on our hands. They use pacifiers because they have bad reflux and the sucking helped with that.

I’m wondering if I should just deal with these short naps and wait it out to see if they lengthen on their own once they crawl/walk/etc or am I missing something very obvious here? It seems like most other babies in this age range take at least 2 longer naps a day. It’s exhausting but I worry about their sleep needs far more than my own!! I can drink coffee, they can’t!!

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.