Is 10.5 months to young for 1 nap?

[FayeTea]

DS is 10.5 mo. He has always been a low sleep baby, but thank god sleeps well overnight (10 or 11h often straight through). His day naps are shocking though. I’m doing well to get one 30 minute and one 40 minute nap into him. Sometimes if we’ve had a very busy morning, that second nap will be 1 hour. He seems completely fine with this: he’s proper sociable (NOT like me!!), tons of energy, eats amazingly well but is quite high needs and craves tons of stimulation and activity. He struggles with the idea of independent play - he really can fuss when bored 😂🙈 He’s lovely but I’m knackered and would just love a proper break. DH is great but is out 7-18 most week days.

Day is like this:

Wake 06:30
Breakfast 07:30
First nap 10-10:30
Lunch 12:30
Second nap 14-14:45
Tea 17:30
Bed 19:00-19:30 depending on how DH’s day has been.

Everything I read says he’s too young for 1 nap. Is it worth trying or should I just suck it up and be grateful for the good night sleep?

To add he self settles in his cot with white noise and blackout blinds after what I think is a pretty strong routine

He struggles with the idea of independent play

Being clingy when awake, so wanting to be held and constantly reassured is a sign of being overtired. I would be weary of your assumption that baby is getting enough sleep - often being hyper is a sign of being over tired (due to adrenaline and cortisol) but can be mistaken for being playful.

For two nap days your first nap is rather late. It's usual to have 234 as hours awake between sleeps - so 2h from waking to first nap, 3h from first nap to second and 4h to bedtime. Your naps could be short because he starts his day already overtired?

The average time for 1-nap days is 18 months. While this is average, there will be some earlier than that and some later. But at 10 months, especially with suggestions that overtired signs could be being mis-read, I would suggest it's too early for the change.

I would say that kid he needs to sleep, he'll sleep.
You can't make people or babies sleep if they don't want too, and he's sleeping well at night, which is when you really want him to sleep, so all is fine.
Being knackered is just par for the course when you have small children and babies.

@FATEdestiny thank you so much for your detailed reply! I had seen you on here a lot and was hoping you might see this haha

ahh I know what you mean. It’s not so much that he’s clingy - quite the opposite in fact. I impose myself on my SIL and her three kids (6 mo, 2 and 4) a lot and he’s in his element there, especially if we go swimming or something. He’s crawling around and generally finding life hilarious (this is when he might nap for 1h). I just struggle to recreate that at home.

Thanks also for the 2,3,4 idea. When I have tried this it took upwards of half an hour to 40 mins of him chatting and rolling round the cot and then getting cross before going to sleep. It didn’t seem to affect nap length either and just meant a very long time awake before bed (13:00 - 19:00). Should I try and add a third nap in then? Or could I be doing anything different to extend them?

Thanks again x

Working on extending his naps would be a good idea. An easy way to do this is to have the second nap in the pram/pushchair so you can rock the pram to resettle. In the cot you could patt him back to sleep - harder work but doable.

The idea is to catch baby when moving out of the deep sleep into a light sleep, but before waking up. This might be a very slight movement - limbs moving, shuffling around, face scrunching up, that kind of thing. If baby starts to cry or eyes open, it's likely too late to resettle because he's awake now. You want to resettle before waking up.

The reason you have a long wake time until bed on the 234 routine is because baby isn't having longer naps. It assumes you don't move to 2-nap days until getting 3-4 h of daytime naps over the two naps (and 11-12h overnight). I naps are constantly less than 45 minutes then while working on linking daytime sleep cycles, I would keep 3 naps per day with around 2h awake between them.

My LO went to 1 nap a day at 10 months. She’s sleep 2 hrs 11-1.