How to manage 1 nap and half days at nursery

[Cafeaulait27]

Our child is 16 months and seems ready to go to one nap.

he does half days at nursery twice a week while I work, 8-1pm.

how best should we manage him transitioning to 1 nap as it seems like it would fall around the time he needs to be picked up from nursery? A couple of times now he’s refused his morning nap at nursery and gone down at 12, but then they have to wake him at 1pm.

should I pick him up at 12.30 on these days and then try to get him down for 1pm at home? As he wouldn’t get more than an hour in at nursery and at home I’m sure he’d get more like 2 hours. Is this too long for him to stay awake? He wakes between 6-7am.

it’s only twice a week he’s at nursery for these half days, a couple of days a week he is looked after by family or me or his dad at home so mostly he would be napping at home but just not sure how to manage nursery days.

thanks

If it were me personally I’d probably put him in nursery for two full days so he can have a proper nap there instead, but collect him slightly earlier in the afternoon.

I’d pick him up a bit earlier for a few weeks until he gets used to one nap. Before long he’ll be able to manage staying up till 1pm

Thanks, I’m thinking @Bumble84 is the best option as I can’t change his nursery days/my working pattern although I can be flexible on start times.

What time does he wake in the morning? Will he fall asleep as soon as you collect him (e.g. in the car)?

If you can be flexible on start time I would start earlier and pick him up at 12 then.

I do this with my LO 17m one a day a week. It’s a PITA and I’ve managed to collect at 12.40 & sleep for 1-2.15 so slightly shorter nap and a later bedroom but it semi works just means can’t do anything in the afternoon. Today I’ve asked for them to try and get down at 11.45 (standard start time ish) till 12.55 and I’ll collect bang on one. I expect an earlier bed time but prefer that than late! Will update later and let you know. I might regret it!

I don’t want to pay extra for the afternoon when it’s not needed and can’t do an extra hour till 2 which would be ideal so hoping this works.

Do you have long drive home? Because mine would fall asleep within a minute when I picked them up just before a nap is due.

Thanks all, luckily we are a short walk from the nursery, so I hope he wouldn’t fall asleep in the pram 🤞 definitely agree if it was a car ride he would be fast asleep straight away!

he is currently waking for the day at 5am, screaming, which is part of the reason for thinking he might be ready for one nap.

at first we thought it was teething/illness but it’s been happening on and off almost every day for about 2 months now. For ages we’ve just been dealing with it as it happens because we need to go to work in the morning and get some sleep, but we realised today it may be because his naps need to change. He does sleep for his naps most of the time but a lot of the time he doesn’t really seem tired when we put him down, so we’re thinking he could go longer.

it’s just hard because if he’s not sleeping through it’s difficult to change to one nap as he’s waking for the day too early (we try to get him back down but he’s usually screaming again within half an hour, and as soon as we get him up for the day he’s so happy.

we might just try pushing his first nap back from this weekend and see how he does and go from there.