Easy daytime sleeper but hard to get down at night

[Lana]

My DD is 4 1/2 months and we are having a hard time getting her down for the final sleep of the day. She is easy to get to sleep during the day. We usually pop her in a sling, walk her till sleepy and then pop her in bed and off she goes to sleep. She will sleep anything from 1-2 hrs each nap. After 6pm we will do a wind down routine of bath, boob and then walk her till sleepy and into bed. She seems to only sleep for 40 mins and then is awake again like it is only a nap and then we spend the next few hours trying to get her back to sleep. She may doze in the sling but is really lightly sleeping and every time you try and pop her down her eyes pop open again. It is taking to somewhere between 10-11pm to get her off into her night time sleep. Sometimes she is awake for 4-5 hrs and obviously gets overtired and impossible to settle. She will then only wake once overnight and wake for the day around 8ish.

At what age do they start having an earlier bedtime? Is it something she will find on her own or do we need to actively move her bedtime earlier? Any ideas on how to break the evening shenanigans?

[~Kim~]

Well, I'm the last person in the world who can answer that cos I'm still struggling with my nearly one year old who does exactly as you've described, but I couldn't come in and not offer and sympathy.

[Lana]

Thanks Kim. I just don't know what to differently as she goes down so well earlier in the day and then is a different baby at night. I guess she gets tired as the day goes on which makes it harder and harder. It is just hard as I have a toddler who is up from 6.30am and goes all day and then when he goes to bed she starts up so it is a really loooong day.

[~Kim~]

I hear ya. Exactly the same in this house.
For a while I just let Nate do as he wanted because it was just such a fuss getting him to even shut his eyes, but man I needed some timeout. Nursing wasn't working, neither was the sling, neither was feeding to sleep.
Some of the girls suggested an osteopath or a chiropracter to get him sorted out. Maybe that's something you could look into. Sadly we're in a country town with no such professionals so I can't offer the suggestion with experience.
What did help was me getting dinner ready early in the day so that it wasn't too hard in the evenings.

[Lana]

I don't want to complain too much as the overnight sleeping is fine for this stage once she gets to sleep but like you say I just want some of my evening time back. Speaking of which she has started up again arghhhh!