11 month old routine/nap issues - advice?

[Sideshowjen]

I’ve been trying to follow a routine set by a sleep consultant over the past couple of weeks and it’s led to a bit of a viscous cycle of over tiredness and early wake ups on alternate days now I have no clue what to do.

My almost 11 month old DS has been pushing his morning nap later and later since 10 months (from 3hrs after wake up to 4hrs) and this has pushed back his afternoon nap too. We were going through a phase of 5am wake ups so I spoke to a sleep consultant who set a routine for us and suggested DS has a 15-30 min power nap in the morning at about 9/9:30 then a long nap around midday. I thought this sounded ridiculous but I’ve been so I’ve given it a go for 2 weeks and have got nowhere.

We’ve been trying to follow the plan but baby just won’t have the 15 min nap unless he wakes at up at 5am. If he wakes up later he just stands in the cot and shouts so we skip the 15 min nap.

If he won’t have the power nap, I wait until after his lunch to put him to sleep (between 12:15-12:30) where he sleeps for 1.5-2.5hrs.

At the moment we have two types of days which are like this:

Day A:
6:40am wake, feed, breakfast etc
11:30am lunch
12:15 sleep
2:30 wake
5:30 dinner
6:45-7pm bed

Day B:
5am wake, I let him sit in cot for a bit if he’s happy then go get him to feed, nappy change play
7ish breakfast
9/9:30 nap (limit this to 15-30 mins which breaks my heart)
11:45 lunch
12:30 nap for 1.5hrs usually on day B
5:30 dinner/bath/play/bed time routine
6:45-7pm sleep

DS is EBF and still wakes once a night.

All of this has led me to conclude that maybe he’s not ready to just have one nap a day and I should try putting him down when he shows his sleep cues (rubbing eyes, yawning). Does anyone have any thoughts.

The routine set by the sleep consultant is not very good and I have since found out it’s loosely based on a Gina Ford routine

Anyways, this has turned out to be an extremely long and rambling post sorry! What I would love to know is:

How do you get their babies to nap at specific as part of a set routine???

What is your 11 month old’s routine?

What do you do when your baby is lengthening their awake times and pushing back their naps?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

My 10 month old has just moved to one nap as if he was having a late morning nap he then wouldn’t nap in the afternoon so was really overtired by bedtime.

He wakes around 7, has lunch about 12 then to bed for a nap of 1-2 hours. Bed at 6.30.

I don’t remember our exact day when my LO was that age but I do remember it was around that time that she dropped to 1 nap (1 longer nap- sometimes 3hrs), this isn’t instantaneous, some days was 2 naps sometimes it was 1. I’d aim for Day A but if your LO looks tired before lunch put them down. As for naps, consistency, using the same words and routine “nap time, up we go”, place in cot etc!

I think it's very hard for a sleep consultant to actually give advice when they don't know your baby, every baby is different.
We had this problem with my now one year old, but I found its trial and error as to when is the best optimum time for naps.

So mine gets up around
7/8and has a bottle
930/10 breakfast
Now depending when he woke up this morning may go for an hour nap now and then have another hour nap around 2/3 but on a typical day he ll stay awake.

12- lunch
1230- will have 1/2hr nap
1500- bottle or snack
1700- tea
1800- bath
1830/1900- bed

He will normally sleep through the night however may get up for a bottle in his bed around 3am if he's teething.

You know your baby best and I worked out these naps by watching my little one when he was tired and then put him to bed awake to avoid him getting overtired.
Try not to stress and just go with the flow for a week or 2 to see when he's tired then place it into a strictish routine.

Good luck hun xx

Thank you all for the responses and I feel somewhat reassured that the flipping between 1 nap a day and 2 naps is normal! I’m just going to go with the flow until I can figure out when he needs his naps.

Yeah don’t force it, he ll drop a nap if he needs to :)