Moving from 2 naps to 1!

[lizardqueenie]

Just wanted some advice from anyone who has been there and done this already. DD is 14 months old at the end of this month and I think she is starting to get to the point of only needing one nap a day.

She is sleeping later in the morning until about 8ish so no real point putting her down for a morning nap but some mornings she is getting quite tired at about 1030/11. So have read that I should just move lunch forward to 11/ 1130 and then put her down for a nap. does this actually work? Is it ok to put her down straight after lunch (thinking of her being full and being sick). Also thinking if she has her sleep over lunchtime there is kind of no way that she will last until bedtime, she needs to be waking up from her nap at 230 ish or later. Don't want to fiddle with things too much for fear of royally offing them up but she does still need to have some kind of sleep during the day.

Cheers :)

What times/duration are her current naps & what time is BT?

Yes if you make the switch straight to 1 nap you do a slightly early lunch followed by nap (she won't be sick, promise ) let her sleep as long as she needs and if nap isn't very long do early bedtime & she may well sleep in til her usual WU time (according to Weissbluth anyway!). Then over time (may take many months) you gradually shift the nap later until it starts after lunch.

Jumping straight to 1 nap can make your LO get quite OT, and the nearer your LO is to 18 months the better she will handle the transition, so lots of mums prefer to start shortening the AM nap first, which brings the PM nap earlier in the day/makes them need a PM nap again if they have started to refuse it. The short AM nap then acts as a bridging nap to get her through until the afternoon nap.

HTH.x

Thanks

Previously: awake 7
Am nap 9/930 for an hour
Lunch:12
Pm nap 1pm for 2 hours max
Bedtime: always been an early bedtime so 6/630

Now: awake 745/8
Am nap (if she goes) 1030 though not sure if I should continue given how late she is waking up
Lunch
Pm nap: think by this point she is really overtired & sometimes that means that she will only sleep for an hour which means the afternoon goes to pot. She is then so tired by bedtime that bedtime is even earlier as she is shattered by 530 :(

Today was quite interesting as she woke up at 8ish but then at 1030 I decided to put her down for a nap rather than see if she could last through until an early lunch and she did actually go for a short nap, only for say 30/ 45 mins but was ideal for getting her though for lunch. Gave her her lunch at 12 and then she seemed tired at 130 so went for another nap until just before 3.

I know what this doesn't make for interesting conversation but I'm really scratching my head with what to do! Thinking about how today went I think she does still need to have a morning nap even if it's just a little one. Although I do worry about such an early bedtime.

My nearly 1yo DD had a very similar routine to yours.
7am wake
9am - 45min nap
12pm - lunch
1pm - nap (2hours)
6.45 bed

Recently she has been sleeping until 8am some mornings so on those days she doesn't have her morning nap and goes down for her afternoon one a bit earlier.

For example, today she woke at 7.45am. She didn't have a morning nap but did start getting tired around 10.30 but I just.distracted her and she got through it. She went to sleep at 12.45pm and is still asleep now at 3pm. I will wake her if she hasn't woken before 3.15.

I think this is a sort of transition period to one nap but the way I see it is if she is sleeping more at night then she is still getting the same amount of sleep in a 24hr period.

I do appreciate the problem that you have which is the overtiredness. If I were you I would consider doing lunch at about 11.30am then straight to bed after and see if this helps.

Hth

We've just in this last month switched from two naps to one. DS is 14 (nearly 15) months. He has never been a brilliant sleeper but we had the two nap thing cracked, and it was great. I was terrified of moving to one nap in case it all went wrong, but then he started to refuse his afternoon nap so I just went for it.

Still settling down a bit, but I've found that on some days he is fine to have lunch at around 12 and then have a nap, followed by a drink of milk when he wakes up. Other days he is shattered by 11.30 and has a drink of milk before his nap and then a late lunch. It usually depends on what we've been doing in the morning and how well he slept the night before.

Considering sleep and naps have always been a problem area for us, this has gone better than I could have hoped, and it is great to have slightly more flexibility rather than spending all day worrying that if the first nap was too late we wouldn't fit the second one in etc etc.

Good luck :)