Dropping to one nap at 16mo... Help!

[TurningThirty]

DD (16 months) has just dropped from 2 naps to 1, but we are having trouble with her waking too early from her lunchtime nap and becoming overtired, which is affecting her nighttime sleep.

She wakes up between 6.30-7am, has lunch at 11.15 and I try to have her down at 11.45am. It sounds early but as we are still only a week into the transition I have had to bring everything forward. She is normally so exhausted by then that she's almost asleep before I carry her to her cot. However, she is waking up at around 1, and no amount of resettling can get her to nap longer. She's then awake until around 6.30pm when she's down for the night.

Usually in the afternoon she melts down from being overtired and then has started waking at 3-4am. However she's also teething (front and bottom incisors, all the rest are through) and has a cold.

Do I need to just ride this out and hope the nap extends itself as she gets used to the new schedule, or do I need to be doing anything to help her nap better? I.e. shifting the timings about?

Hoping the collective wisdom of MN can help me out here!

Why don't you bring bedtime forward to 6, we did that for DS for a couple of months while everything worked itself out. He eventually extended his lunchtime nap.

In terms of your transition, what are you moving from?

When I do the two naps to one transition, it is done very gradually over a several weeks. Mine have always gone from having a nap at 9.30am and again at 2.00pm. When ready to drop the morning nap, we gradually and slowly make the morning nap later and later until it morphs into the lunchtime nap (this also allows for the occasional late afternoon powernap as a left-over from the 2 nap days).

I am wondering if the cause of the shorter lunchtime nap is overtiredness because you are moving it too quickly. I often find morning naps settled at around 11am for a while (and includes a shorter late afternoon nap) before that final push until after 12pm, settling at 12.30 ish eventually.

It depends what you are transitioning from, but 11.45am seems too late in the day for a child who a week ago was going to sleep at, say 10am.

My dd2 did the same, I rode it out. The bad night sleep was def due to over tiredness but she just wouldn't do an afternoon nap. This started at about 14 months, she is now 17 months and we have managed to get the afternoon nap to 1.30 - 3.30 and she is now a very happy sleeper.

Thanks for advice all. We tried to offer her an afternoon catnap to make up for short lunchtime nap but she wouldn't have it . She did this when we transitioned from 3-2 naps too, she seems to prefer a new routine being consistent rather than a gradual transition.

My mum suggested gradually putting her down later until it's midday and seeing if that helps. I reckon she'll grow into it. Last night she slept 12 hours so i think we'll push on and see what happens.