15mo - what should I do about naps?

[Madallie]

dd never used to be a good sleeper but settled and just recently was in a routine (when not ill, teething etc) of:

6.30/7 - awake
10-11 - nap (Ihr)
2.30/3-3.30-4 - nap (usually 1 hr)
715/7.30 - bed

For the most part she was sleeping through (like I said when not ill or teething).

But then for 3 days she refused to nap in the pm. She's quite happy to be in her cot but she just laid there chatting for the entire nap time. So those days she only had one nap.

On the 4th day I thought I'd just put her down for the 1 nap but decided I should push it a bit later so that she was not awake too long before bedtime. So on day 4 (yesterday) she napped 11.00-12.15. I then put her to bed a bit earlier than normal at 6.40pm. BUT this has all obviously caused he to become OT and she was basically awake on and off all night and none of us got hardly any sleep.

I just don't know what to do. This has happened in the past when we've tried to drop to 1 nap so we've just reverted to 2 again but this time she just won't fall asleep in the pm.

To make it more difficult she just will not (however tired) fall asleep in her pushchair so I'm constantly having to rush home for naps. I don't mind so much if she does actually sleep but now she doesn't.

Anyone experiences similar at this age? What did you do?

Do you wake her from the nap? Around this age my DS dropped to one nap of around 1.5 hours, from 2 shorter naps, we moved the morning nap later and let him sleep until he woke up naturally. At bedtime we followed his sleep cues and put him down when he seemed tired but not too sleepy.

It took about a week though until he settled fully into the new routine, so don't expect miracles!!

Thanks Rockchick.

What time did you put that one nap at?

I think it was about 11.30-12ish depending on what time he woke that morning - I'm not the biggest fan of specific routine times so would just go for whatever time he was getting sleepy :)

At that age mine only had one nap anytime between 11 and 12.30 depending how tired they were. Slept for about 1.5-2 hours. I didn't wake them. Sleeping at night from 6.30-6.

Her natural routine may be changing. I'd go with the flow. If she's tired put her down for a nap, if not leave her up.

I've had mine going down for a nap at 10.30am and in bed for 6pm. They don't know the time, they just know they're tired.