Moving from 3 naps to 2

[breatheslowly]

DD is 7 mo and some days she has 2 naps, others she has 3. They tend to be 30min long, irrespective of the number. I am not convinced that she is getting enough sleep in the day. When moving from 3 naps to 2 do you drop one of the naps and the others stay at the same time, or do the two move to be more evenly spaced? Should I be ensuring she does the same thing every day or just let her do her thing?

IME it is easier to move to 2 naps when they are having 3 regular meals as they then have a morning and an afternoon nap. To extend them to start with, could you take DD out for a long walk for one of her naps if she sleeps in the pram? Might get her used to sleeping for longer at a time.

We moved from (very very roughly) napping at 9:00 (1 hour), 12:30 (1 hour) and 4:30 (half and hour) to 10:00 (half an hour) and 2:00 (1.5/2 hours) but this was only possible when we had the routine of mealtimes to structure the day. Try letting her do her own thing for a while, then try structure and see what works best. HTH.

Don't they just do it themselves? Sorry to sound naive, but i'm fairly baby-led as DS has always got there on his own in the endwith little persuasion from me. He's 5 and a half months and appears to be taking his morning nap later now, so i assume he's trying to get to 2 naps on his own.... i had no idea you actually have to work at getting them to drop a nap.

Thanks for your responses. I don't know if you have to work at it, but I think that DD doing her own thing can result in only 2 30 min naps per day which leaves her quite tired in the hours before bedtime and she would then nap at 5.30 if I let her which really messes up her bedtime.