Is it time to drop a nap? 15mo wont go to sleep at bedtime anymore

[Jellybabie3]

My DS is nearly 15mo. Hes reliably had 2 naps for months. 1 about 2.5-3 hours after waking and another 3 hours later. He usually naps for 1-1hr 30 a time.

This week he has been a nightmare. Waking chatting for hours for example. But the last few nights he just wont go to sleep at 7.30pm for love nor money. I ended up in a temper taking him back downstairs and he stayed awake til 9.45pm. Tonight he is absolutely wide awake so going to be same problem.

Trouble is he is shattered after 3 hours in the morning and wont nap longer than 1.5 hours and cant go from say 11am til bedtime with no sleep! What do I do here?

My DD dropped a nap around this time. You may find that as a nap is dropped he adjusts his one nap to be longer or move it to a later time. Give it a go and see what happens, it can't be much worse can it?

Very true. I am getting very grumpy with the howling and shouting for 2 hours. Will try it tomorrow. Thanks

We found the 2-1 nap transition less straightforward than the others. For a good 6 weeks starting at 15 months our DD’s naps were all over the place. Sometimes just one 30-minute nap all day and cranky and exhausted by 6pm, other days she’d nap 5 hours total and go to bed at 8 like a champ! Now at 17 months she’s finally settled into a good routine with one 1.5-hour nap around 1pm, and night sleep from 8-8. We just found we had to play it by ear for a while. It can be frustrating but it shouldn’t last forever!

Ive found that my kids would often surprise me by adapting to something very well she I was convinced they wouldn't. And equally I've been in situations where I thought I'd planned it all out so they'd be happy (napped/fed/changed etc etc) and it would fail.

Always worth a try. Hope it goes well.

We're having fun and games with DD tonight because of the bloody fireworks 🙄

when not she

The exact same thing happened with dd about a month ago (she's 14 months now). It took about 2 weeks of sometimes having 2 and sometimes having 1 nap but now she does 1-2 hours at 11am and goes to bed at 6. She's much happier and sleep is much less of a battle.

DD is 16mo and just dropped first nap properly this week. you may find if you keep him busy in the morning you can go longer before the nap, or wake after 20 or 30 mins for first nap.

To me that sounds like quite alot of day time sleep for his age. Although my dds have both been nap dodgers since birth, and rarely had more than one nap a day after a year old, so mine are probably the weird ones! You'll probably find dropping the morning nap and bringing the afternoon one earlier will make bedtime far easier. My dd2 is 21 months and has one nap most days, but occasionally skips it completely now, and on those days she's asleep within seconds of going upstairs. She sleeps 12 hours straight at night so I don't worry about how much/little she sleeps in the day. x

Sorry meant to say for an easy transition, try having a week of calm, non adventurous mornings, so he isn't tired so early on, and then just drag it out as long as possible. He might have a grouchy hour or so, but just try and distract until your desired nap time. You might have to do the same thing on an evening until he adjusts, and you could always bring bedtime forward if that suits you.

We found with both of ours that we has to start capping one or other of the naps at this stage - so you wake them after say 45 minutes. It was trial and error as to which nap it was better to wake them early from, and also depended on what time it was they went down for the morning nap.

Thanks all. I am going to try and stretch his awake time tomorrow morning for abit and see where it gets us. Christmas has really thrown him so I have nothing to loose. Trouble is too that he will be back with the childminder next week so all plans then go back out the window!

I have swim class on a friday at 11am. I usually try to get a nap in before hand and wake at 10.20am. I guess realistically now I need to get him to hold out til after..but that would be 12 o clock and no lunch. Christ this is tricky

The other issue is if i drag out his naps til hes super tired he wakes after 30min on the dot. I guess i just try and resettle him for a few days til he gets it?

Way too much sleep at this age! Keep busy all morning and give cows milk before he goes down if not had lunch. 1 2.5hr nap max a day I reckon.

Ah OK. So if he wakes at 7 aim for a 11/12 nap?

At this age DS had lunch at 1130 then straight to bed for a 12-2 nap. Worked well.

Great thanks. I will give it a go.

I’m just in middle of nap transition for my 15 mo

What’s been working until now was
15 min nap in am(I woke him) then 3 hours later a 1.5- 2 hour nap. If I gave him longer in am he refused afternoon nap till much later and evenings were a nightmare!

Recently he was taking ages to sleep for nap 1 and pushing back nap 2. I don’t want to loose nap one as that was my shower time (haha) but he’s clearly not tired at 1030 anymore.

So I’ve done a few days of 1 nap and today was first day it worked!

Wake was 715
He was asleep for 1140 (usually does nap 1 at 1030 but recently was singing in cot till 11) and I woke him at 2 and put him to bed at 7.

I tried 12 and 1230 and he only managed an hr nap or 35 mins! But I’m hoping 1130 will work again tmrw and then I’ll start pushing it later

OK thanks. DS went down great at 7 tonight but has just woken for the 3rd time....think Christmas has really got him all messed up! Hoping as things calm down he will start to settle again and the nap transition will be easier

@Jellybabie3 hello! We were on the October due dates page together but I have Ncd since.

Also struggling with naps atm. This has been a hard Xmas tbh. DS has been very very clingy and has been really poorly. He had a fever on Xmas eve and now a cold, cough and conjunctivitis as well as teething all at once, poor sod, so he's really not very well atm. He's rarely been poorly either so it's all come at once.

He's still bf and has pretty much gone off all food as is bfing like a newborn! It's pretty exhausting for me because his sleep (which was never great) has gone completely to pot and he won't settle in his cot at all

I'm hoping once he's de-bugged I can also work on the 2-1 nap transition. I find when his nap is at 10 we miss all the good baby groups as they're on at 9:30-11:30 or similar (not my reason for dropping a nap btw!).

Sorry I can't offer advice but hopefully some solidarity will suffice!

Hi Grapes. Sorry to hear your DC has had a tough Christmas. It really throws them it seems, even so young, and you've had it much harder with illness.
It feels like such a milestone to drop to 1 nap and its come right out of the blue. Fx it works out in the next few weeks.