18 month old transition from 2 naps to 1

[OriginalHugsy]

Is it unusual she still has 2 naps? She gets up mega early at around 5.30 and has done for months. Then has a 30 min nap at 9 and a 1 hour nap at 1 and goes to bed at 7pm.
She has 1 nap a day after her lunch at nursery on the 2 days she attends and is always tired and ratty on collection but they tell me happy through the day. Yesterday I thought I'd give it a go and miss the morning nap so it was ok until about 11am and we went to meltdown mode, so stressful with a crying toddler and she wouldn't eat lunch which I gave at 11.30 so she could sleep at 12.
This did happen and she slept for 80/90 mins. But was just so upset about every little thing. Any ideas or anyone had same thing? Shall I just persevere?

I think that if she happily goes down for her second nap, then she still needs both. My ds started refusing his second nap so it was obvious he was cutting down to one - we had some of the ratty stuff you describe where 1 wasn't enough but the fact that he would refuse the second meant I persevered with the new routine. I do think they decide for themselves so if your dd is happy with 2, I'd go with her.

This is such a timely thread for me as my DD (13months) has to get to one nap a day when she moves up to the toddler room at nursery in a few months. I don't know how on earth we'll get there at this point, she's so firmly on two naps so I'll be reading with interest!
It seems like getting your little one to sleep later in the morning might be key though - I'm sure you've tried everything to sort out the 5:30 wake ups though..? If ours wakes before 7 am we treat it like a night time wake - give her milk in her room, still in dark with minimal communication, then straight back into cot....she generally goes back to sleep (if not she chunters around in the cot babbling happily to herself). The pre-7am wake ups have got much less frequent as an added bonus.

I agree with SheWhoMustBe. Is the early waking a recent thing? If so, that could be a sign that she is in fact ready to drop the morning nap. She may be using that morning nap as an extension of night time sleep.
I would start treating any wake up before say, 7am as a night time wake up, no morning nap and then a 2 hour nap from 12-2. Lunch might have to be early, but if she's as tired as you say I'd be inclined to give her a snack at 10.30-11 then give her lunch after 2pm wake up.

FWiW DD was 10months when she dropped to 1nap and she did it with no trouble at all.

This is what happened here. We dropped the morning nap and dd would go for her one nap around 11 and sleep for around 2 hours through lunch, this was v akward to begin with as had to do two lunches etc. Though gradually over a few weeks we managed to push the one nap backwards bit by bit to a couple of hours in the afternoon.

I'd also do sone snack arounsaround 10.30 and lunch later on and see how that works out.

She's been waking up at that sort of time since about 8/9 months old. Generally sleeps well through the night and I did try later bedtime and all that but still was awake early and when she wakes she's definitely awake and if I left her I tried to settle her she gets upset and louder and louder! I did wonder if dropping a nap might help with the early Waking but 3 days In and still early but miserable from 10.30am til she has her nap!

With DD it took ages for her to completely drop morning nap. We'd do some days 1 nap, some days 2 nap for about 6-8 months. I think she finally dropped the morning nap altogether about 18 months.

It sounds like yours still needs 2 naps, and I wouldn't force the move to 1 nap. It may just be that she is biologically an early riser...