Baby goes to sleep awake at night but will only feed to sleep for naps, advice please

[blueblue]

My six month old will go down awake at bedtime and after any night wakings (they usually need breastfeeding after the bottle if it's a later wake up after 2am) but will only fall asleep in the day whilst being bottle fed.

They used to nap from awake until daylight savings and ever since they are overtired when I put them down (due to school run for older children). Ever since this, their naps are a lot shorter (40mins instead of 1-2 hours plus) and they cry due to overtiredness every afternoon.

Any advice? I'm a bit scared to try any sleep training as they go down awake happily at night and after any night wakings and I don't want to change this. But I know they are overtired and that I do need to make some changes otherwise they'll be in the same pattern until they stop napping. I'm struggling to find any advice online as it all assumes the baby never goes to sleep independently, rather than it being a daytime issue

 

[noon_child]

I have no advice about changing how they nap (my daughter always needed "help") but to lengthen the nap I used to start watching her intently about 5-10 mins before she usually woke for any tell tale signs of stirring. As she started to move or make noise or turn her head I'd start shhhing, or put my hand on her, or patting. This put her back to sleep (mostly - if I wasn't too late, or too loud). After doing this method for a week or so I noticed she stirred less and I was able to watch her settle herself back to longer sleep without me having to do as much. Then I left her to it.

 

[blueblue]

Thanks, I did the same with first child and it worked a treat after a few days. He naps downstairs with me in the light, I'm going to try it when he's upstairs in his own room for naps after we've finished decorating.

He is occasionally going down awake in the day now, and has had a couple of longer naps, I'm hopeful it will get better.