Dropping morning nap - am I in danger of breaking my baby!?

[dekari]

I have introduced a new nap routine for my dd this weekend and am not sure if i'm doing the right thing....

i recently thought my 12.5mo dd was ready to drop her morning nap after a week of her resisting sleep. She then started crawling and got a bad, lingering cold and her morning nap went from 30mins to an hour (from 9.30ish). Her pm nap has gone from approx 1hr30 to around 50 mins (from 1.30ish) and trying to cut the morning nap back down hasn't rectified it. She generally does 7 til almost 7 at night.

She's been really grumpy in the afternoons the past couple of weeks and seems less tired at bedtime, so I've started wondering again if she's ready to drop the nap. Then she refused to sleep at nursery on Friday morning (they tried twice using the normal routine), slept at home in the afternoon for 1hr40 (unheard of) and was in a much better mood - so I decided to experiment this weekend by cutting out the am nap... I put her down in her cot around 12 both days and the results were as follows:

She woke up at 6.45 yesterday; 6.30 today - getting gradually earlier?

Her nap was 1hr15 yesterday; 1hr today

She was tired both mornings, but not too grumpy, and cried before falling asleep

She was fine yesterday afternoon but seemed very overtired and grouchy/hyper this afternoon

I'm not sure if this is all normal and to be expected while she adjusts or whether it shows she's not ready yet? Should i keep up with this new routine for a few more days or go back to the 2 nap schedule? Any thoughts/experiences you could share would be greatly appreciated!

My personal opinion is stick with 2 naps as long as possible. I was reading a book that says that many babies are better with two naps till at least 15 months and then they slowly make the change between 15 and 18 months (may have some 2 nap and some 1 nap days). 30 minutes isn't even a full sleep cycle so isn't really an effective nap and might lead to overtiredness disrupting the next sleep. I'd aim for an hour in the morning and an hour to an hour and a half in the afternoon.

However it might be hard to nap at nursery because it is all too much fun so maybe things might be different on nursery days than they are on home days?

It might just be that 12 is too late to start with. Naps shortening & earlier waking sounds like she's getting overtired. Agree with pp hang onto 2 naps as long as poss, but if she refuses not much u can do except go with it!

When we first went to 1 nap ds napped at 11am as he couldnt make it til 12 & that worked well for quite a while. From 13-15 months he had 1 nap some days & 2 naps on other days as he couldn't handle 1 nap every single day & this helped keep ontop of the overtiredness. The inconsistency is a bit of a pain but its a transitional phase & takes them a bit of time to get used to staying awake so much longer. It wont be forever!!!