Am I being too precious about baby nap timings at nursery?

[coffeeandsleep]

Would like some advice from those who have transitioned their little ones to nursery.

My toddler will start at 13 months and is currently on 2 naps a day: 9.30-11am and 2-3.30pm (approximately).

The nursery room will have older toddlers who are on just one nap at midday.

They said they can accommodate a morning nap but it would be good if the afternoon nap can take place at 12.30pm and if I can work on this at home.

I’m not sure what they mean…. My baby wakes up at 6.30am ish and then needs a nap every 3-3.5 hrs. She won’t be tired enough after the first nap to just drop off to sleep at 12.30pm so I’m not sure how that’s going to work?

I’m concerned they want my toddler to follow a routine that is not going to suit until she’s ready to drop a nap.

any advice please? Am I being too precious and obsessing a bit too much about naps? This might just be part and parcel of using nurseries? Thanks

YABU

The chances are your baby will be all over the place when first starting, doing 2 naps for a few weeks and then moving to 1 nap more consistently.
Theres nothing wrong with them going to 1 nap around 14/15 months.

I think baby just tends to do a different schedule at nursery. Mine only had 1 nap with me at that age but sometimes wld have 2 at nursery or sleep a ridiculous amount of time more than that they wld at home.

I wouldn't change ur routine at home.

My son started at a similar age and was solidly on 2 naps at home. I knew he wouldn't do that at nursery because he has very bad FOMO(!) so until 18 months he would have one nap on nursery days (3 days a week) and 2 naps every other day. He was a bit of an overtired mess for the first few weeks but settled into the routine quickly.

I get why nursery can't fit to your schedule but I get why it's so frustrating when you know what your baby needs. Hopefully you'll find a rhythm that works for you, like we did.

Not necessarily. We looked at some but they were bound by school drop off/pick up so they were actively trying to not have a morning nap or and the afternoon one finished by 2.30pm.

That was one of the reasons we preferred the nursery when DD was younger as they went with the flow and let them sleep when they showed signs of being tired. And that included over lunch and they fed them afterwards.

Agree with the pp saying shorten the first nap to 45 min. With her current naps she will hardly have much opportunity to play alongside the toddlers her age, it could be 5 hours of the day that she is asleep or they are.

If you mean by offering two naps, I think that’s probably unrealistic. If she naps once a day at 12:30 five days a week, she’s going to continue that at the weekend, in my experience.

I’d definitely want to ensure that she’s getting enough sleep, though. At 13 months, my son still needed two naps. We were aware he couldn’t move up rooms until he only napped once at lunch, as the ratios upstairs were 1:4 and they needed everyone to nap around the same time, but they were happy to accommodate this in the Movers room.

This ☺️

@coffeeandsleep Found your post and wondered how your LO got on with the nap schedule when starting nursery? Mine is just starting in the toddler room (15 months yesterday) and has struggled with the 2-1 nap transition so far. She woke at 6.40am today and finally napped at nursery at 1.55pm after a lot of tears! Wondering how yours adjusted with the schedule there?

A pretty standard way to transition down to one nap, is to cap the first one. You're at the stage that this should be happening anyway.
Ask them to do 9-9.30/9.45 max and then again down at 12.30/1 for 1.5hrs.
They will gradually drop their morning nap and have one long lunchtime one, which is the aim anyway.

Maybe I've just been really lucky with my nursery, but they did everything they could to accommodate the existing nap schedules wherever possible. The only exception to this was once the children were moved to the toddler room and were generally only one one nap a day, and if their nap was too early they would miss the lunch which wasn't ideal so I was more than happy for them to keep my child up until after they had eaten and then they all sort of fell asleep together. At 13 months though, I would expect a nursery to try to accommodate a child's existing schedule.

In the end they had to accommodate a short morning nap. She would wake at 6.30am and they could see she was very tired 10am ish so needed a short nap. So for about a month they did a short morning nap + afternoon nap, before transitioning to one nap.

At first she would only nap 20/30 mins there - now she usually does 1.5 hr afternoon nap. Being on 1 nap has helped her overnight sleep, she sleeps from 6.45pm-8am on average now.

all the best with yours - it may just take a bit of time for her to settle into the new routine or could they also accommodate a short morning nap?