How to deal with transition from 2 to 1 naps

[dekari]

Hi

After a couple of weeks of nap reluctance and 4 days of stressful nap resisting, I'm finally starting to accept that my 11mo needs to drop her morning nap.

Up until now, her schedule has been (roughly):
6.45: wake up
7am: get up
9am: put down for 30 min am nap (9.15 to 9.45)
1pm: put down for 1.5 hour pm nap (1.15 to 2.45) - this used to be 2 hours until recently and can now vary from 1hr to 1hr50
7pm: bed

She generally has about 11.5 hours sleep at night and usually gets woken up by daddy getting up!

She has been crying before her naps this week (10-15 mins) - seemingly because she's struggled to get to sleep... today she just would not nap at 9ish. We went out at 10.30 and she grabbed 15 mins in the car (cheating?) then slept for 1.5 hours from 1.30 when we got home.

I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to nap at 9 anymore and I'm happy with this (especially as she's starting nursey soon) but what can I expect now? We're both used to her being in a routine so I'd like to move towards a new one - what time should I aim to put her down for her LTN? We go to groups most mornings - is she likely to be grumpy at them (at least for a couple of weeks)?

Any insight/advice would be appreciated.

Thank you!

[SunnyUpNorth]

My little girl is two so it has been a year since I did this so my memory is a but foggy!

But I think what we did was being the lunchtime nap forward to around 11.30/12ish. It did get annoying at times as we had to leave groups a bit early or maybe give her a snack and postpone lunch some days til after the nap which in turn affected dinner a bit.

But - quite quickly she adjusted to the one nap and we were then able to start pushing it back a bit to around 12.30 or so which made things easier.

The plus side is that you get a good chunk of time in both the morning and afternoon to go out so it is a bit less restrictive if you like them to nap in their cots.

I think if I were you I would start by having a few days at hole or locally and just see how she gets on without the morning nap, and what time she starts getting tired and then put her down.

My dd still has a two hour nap from 1-3 and I love it! I don't know if your dd is waking yet but once she is she will probably get exhausted and start doing a really decent nap then.

[dekari]

Thanks Sunny... She's not moving at all - lazy thing! Think that's probably part of the reason why she's not tired enough for 2 naps. Everytime she has a nap "fail", I find her on her front in her cot, trying to get her legs up under her - she obviously realises that she needs to spend her time practicing crawling rather than sleeping!

[SunnyUpNorth]

Hmm yes it is tricky when they get old enough to be wide awake but can't tire themselves out physically. I often think there is a gap in the market for a baby running machine type contraption!