Nap swapping? Possible or futile?

[NipperNapNope]

DD (9m) takes a big 1-2 hour nap in the morning and then a cat nap of 45 minutes in the afternoon if I'm lucky although it usually has to be in the sling. We haven't done any baby groups because she sleeps through them all. Can I get her to swap the naps round and take the big one in the afternoon or is that foolish to even attempt?

Yeah both mine naturally did their big nap in the morning and a shorter one after lunch. I successfully switched it with both of them.

I never managed to get dd to swap - it's very inconvenient isn't it! When she was about 2 and only having one nap I then managed to slowly push it back to about 12pm. We used to go to toddler group and have to leave halfway through!

Did you just wake them after 45 minutes in the morning? She's only just started doing a long nap and I'm afraid I'll end up back at two short naps.

When she gets more mobile/moves to one nap she may do it naturally. I think that if she's only just started doing longer naps now might be a good window to encourage her to swap. I'd wake her around the 40 to 45min mark in the morning and commit to being a bit of a nap routine bore for at least a few weeks to get her to join up afternoon sleep cycles. What worked for me was to be really inflexible about lunchtime then nappy change then naptime for a while, but my DD was older so my advice may not be suitable. Good luck!

The second nap will ultimately be the one that's dropped as the first nap gets later and longer. Therefore this is only a phase, I wouldn't worry.

The 45m nap could indicate not enough awake time between the two naps. What time are the naps and is baby having uninterputed night sleep or waking in the night?

Yeah I just cut the first one short. I think we had a few days of 2 short naps but then they both started sleeping longer for the second nap.
They then dropped the first nap and kept the second.

She will be 10 months soon and to be honest I'm sick of being stuck in the house. I'd really like to be able to do at least one baby group/social thing. Up until two weeks ago she did two 45 min naps a day. Up for the day between 6-7 then down for a nap at 9 for 45 min. Down again at 1:30ish for another 45 min. Down for the night between 7-8. But now she's been doing up to two hours during the morning nap and she's so much happier that I don't want to lose the long sleep nap but would really prefer it to be the afternoon one. I'm just so hesitant to wake her up early from the morning sleep. She's up at least twice more like three times in the night.

At 10 months my DD had two long naps - 90m-2h at both 9am amd 1pm. So it's possible that the afternoon one might lengthen and the morning nap stay as it is.

Mine never did 2 long naps (and dropped down to one nap at 12 months then no naps at all at 20 months) so entirely depends on the baby!
I get what you mean about feeling stuck at home. That was the reason I shifted the naps around!