Please could you look at my 12 month olds nap times?

[Bretonicca]

Looking for help working out my 12 month olds nap routine please. Experienced mums, please can you help?

He is just 12 months and currently sleeping at night from about 7.45/8pm (by the time bath routine is over) to 6.45/7am. Day naps he correctly has two. First one is 3 hrs after wake up as any earlier he isn't tired. I have tried keeping the morning one short, so roughly 10-1045. However, he then needs at least 3.5 hrs awake window (and preferably longer) for next nap, which is pushing that nap back until later. He won't sleep till 2.30. Health visitor suggested he doesn't sleep past 3, but 30 minutes isn't enough for him (or me!) so I generally go and wake him at 3.30. We start bath at 7.15.

I always have to wake him from these two naps and feel like he could nap longer.

I know some people move their babies to one nap at 12 months but all the guidance says it's too soon. Also he does seem quite tired for his morning nap. It's the afternoon one that he fights sometimes. I don't know how I would move to one nap anyway, based on these timings.

What would you do?

Following as in the same boat with my 14 month old! She naps at similar times 9:30 and 2:30 but bedtime is getting later and later because of the PM nap. No idea how I’d go to one nap either 😂

Mine (13 months) recently started resisting them a little, would go down for morning nap ok about 10 for an hour but really took a while in the afternoon, sometimes not until 3pm and then either needing to be woken up or sleeping too late which then affected bedtime

I’ve just moved him to one nap at 1pm and he’s sleeping for 2.5 hours. Its working well so far. He is tired but not a grouchy baby so easy to keep distracted until then, and this also means he gets more ‘playtime’ in the morning too as it felt like as soon as he’d had breakfast and snack it would be nap then lunch then back to bed

Hah! Following as my 11 month old does not and has never slept through the night. He does tend to have one long nap at about 9am, for 2+ hours and then sometimes a short nap of 30 minutes in the afternoon if we are in the car although this pushes back bedtime from 7 to 8 p.m. typically.

I was actually thinking that two shorts naps would be the way forward to encourage him to sleep through the night? Maybe somebody will be along soon with some words of wisdom.

@Mrsdoubtfireswig how did you move from 2 to 1 please?

@KevinandRainbowlina from what I know, (and I'm no expert), if the morning nap is too early and too long they conflate it with their night time sleep and it encourages early or night wakings

I'm in the same boat. DS is 13 months and sleeps well at night (11 - 12hrs) but naps are a nightmare!

He generally has 30/40 mins in the morning and around an hour in the afternoon (that's his natural pattern, we don't wake him). It takes a lot of effort to get him down though, he fights sleep even though he's knackered.

Sometimes he will skip his afternoon nap all together which isn't great for him, or me 😵‍💫

Following with interest as I have a just turned 12 month old boy too, and his routine sounds really similar to your little one OP. He generally sleeps 8.30pm to 7am ish, with one wake up around 12.30 where we give a dream feed then put him straight back down to sleep. Naps are usually 9.30/10am ish for up to an hour and then around 2.30 in the afternoon again for about an hour. I don’t stress too much about the afternoon nap being a bit later as we’ve found he is fine for an 8/8.30pm bedtime as long as he’s awake by 4.

We do his dinner at 5.30pm and bath at 6, then a bit of CBeebies while we have our dinner, then read him some books then bed.

Your little one’s routine sounds just fine and he’s sleeping through the night which is brilliant! The only thing I can suggest is possibly trying to push the morning nap half an hour earlier but I’m not sure it would make a huge amount of difference really. The average age for transitioning to 1 nap is 16 months apparently so it might still be a while before he’s ready for that.

Cut him down to 1 nap mine dropped to 1 nap at 9months old she sleeps really well at night 8-8 or there abouts. I started by dropping her morning nap to a 15 min catnap she quickly didn't need that one at all now she sleeps 1.30-3.30

If it was me, I'd move to one nap. 12 months is perfectly fine to have one nap.
When we transitioned to one I just literally went for it and kept him up, we started with a time of 11am and after a week or so I gradually started putting it back 15 mins every few days until we hit 12pm.
He was much better with one long nap.
First couple of days I just made sure he was really occupied until we got to nap time.

Either move bedtime later or try moving to one nap. Remember nothing is permanent, just give it a go and if after 2 weeks it’s not working then change it back.

But honestly with such a good sleeper over night then something is working well.

Mines 12 months and we've started a routine over the past month or so of:

Wake 6am
Nap 9am for 20mins -half hr
Next nap at 12 for 2 and a half hours but he often wakes up before
Bed 7pm

@Bretonicca Hiya I just kept him awake, but for the first few days I avoided any situations where he’d be likely to drop off in the morning such as the car / pram. I kept him playing with toys all morning until lunch, then he was occupied with food and then straight up to bed afterwards

This is the hardest nap transition.
Normally in your situation the advice is to make the morning nap progressively shorter until it is 15/20 mins long and do the lunchtime nap 1-3. This is up until 18 months when you drop the little morning nap all together
So you’d be looking at
7am wake and milk
8am brekkie
10.15 - 10.30 catnap in the pram (for now do 10-10.30 and work towards the 15 mins over a few weeks)
11.30 lunch
12 milk
12.30-2.30 nap or 1-3 nap
3 milk
5pm dinner
6pm bath
6.30 pm bottle and bed