When did your baby drop from three naps to two?

[Rosiebun]

And what did that transition look like for you?

We’re struggling with my 7 month olds naps at the moment, she’s fighting them and they have been 30 minutes on the dot since she was around 4 months old. I want to experiment with 2 naps to see if it helps her lengthen them, but not sure how to go about it. Is anyone willing to share their current routine?

The afternoon one will usually just become shorter/harder until they drop it altogether.

Routine wise, you're looking at roughly:

Wake up
2 hours later first nap.
Wake up
3 hours later second nap
Wake up
4 hours later, bedtime

For example:

7am wake
9am nap
10am wake
1pm nap
3pm wake
7pm bedtime

This is obviously just a rough guide.

Eight months and I think it was the easiest nap transition of all irrc. She just stopped having that last short nap of the day naturally, almost overnight.

Around 6.5-7 months. We had to do a very early bedtime for a week or 2.

Probably around 6/7 months, try a morning nap about 9.30 (depending on wake up time) then an after lunch nap around 1pm. Ideally the afternoon nap will be the longest one and when you feel they’re ready drop the morning nap and do one good nap around 12.30-2.30pm

This is what we are currently doing, she naps at 9.30am and 1pm but only for 30 mins each time, so ends up having another 30 mins at 4.30 but she just constantly seems overtired. I’ve no idea how to get her sleeping longer! Tried contact naps and the pram etc

I always just let mine lead I never forced her to have less naps because she always had high sleep needs and was always on more naps than others her age. They will lengthen naturally when they are ready

Dropped to 2 naps by around 6-7 months old

If you widen the wake window before a nap they will usually extend it if they know how to join up sleep cycles by themselves. For my first child, we swapped at 6 months and for my second at 8.5 months - they had different natural wake windows. I would say in both cases their wake windows seemed to suddenly lengthen and then stabilise. On the basis of 7-7 at night, i'm roughly 9.30-10.15 for nap one and 1.30-3pm for nap 2 - struggling to do one or more of the naps is a big sign they need to swap over. If they are getting over tired after the transition at bed time a bath can calm them down and help them - you can also put them down a bit earlier for a while post transition.