2 - 1 nap transition

[Csx99]

Hi all,

My son (almost 11 months) has been a very good sleeper since he was 5 months old. Sleeps 7pm-6am every night and has been having 2 x 1.5hr naps since around 6 months old.

However recent behaviour has made me think he's starting the 2-1 nap transition.

He's started to have a very long first nap, as in 2-2.5 hours long which then makes it difficult to put him down for a second nap. Even if I wake him up early from this nap, he is still a pain to get down for the second nap.

He's also needing more awake time before bed, he used to finish his first nap at 3pm ish and go to bed at 7 but now he'll refuse to go to bed until at least 8pm+

The problem is, he has his first nap around 3 hours after he's woke up in the morning, if he is going down to 1 nap a day I'm unsure how he'll do staying awake til around 11ish for his nap.

Any advice welcome

My DD dropped to one nap around ten months, we had a similar change to what you’ve described. It wasn’t hard to change the nap routine, I just kept her up longer before her nap. Kept her busy, took her out etc. I find that when she has had less daytime sleep she then sleeps longer overnight, so after a few days she was sleeping later into the morning.

We did have a bit of a setback with some early starts. On those days I let her have a 15 minute power nap in the morning (just on me) and then she would still go down fine for her nap later on. It took probably 2-3 weeks to fully get to grips with.

Similar to now - she has recently started waking in the night (for hours) if she naps more than 2 hours a day. So I cut her nap to 1.5 hours ish, and she started sleeping 11.5-12 hours overnight instead of the 11 hours she was doing before.

I also found that when she was having one 2 hour nap and had gotten into that routine, I could put her to bed at 7.30 and she’d wake up at 6.30 rather than 6am. Again might just help with waiting til the nap at 11.

@Bancha that's really helpful thankyou! Everyone keeps telling me he's too young to be dropping to 1 nap but my friend's daughter was around the same age. I am hoping he'll sleep that extra hour til 7am but won't get my hopes up!

Delay his nap time by 15 mins every few days until you hit dinner time.
We also had a couple of early starts once we moved to 1 nap but didn’t take long for him to sleep longer on a night.

I don’t think it’s that uncommon to be honest. The books say later but loads of the mums I know switched down to one nap before their baby was one. I was worried too but it was so much less stressful than I thought.

I kept my DD at 3 naps for far longer than I should and it was a nightmare, so I learnt from that and dropped to one as soon as she started resisting her second. It’s also great because you have so much more freedom to get out and about.

Yeah I agree with above pp, I actually felt I had a life back going to 1 nap as we were able to do so much more throughout the day and not having to clock watch to get back to settle for nap!

One thing I'm stuck about - he usually has lunch around 12pm. If I was to put him for a nap around 11-1/1:30 then when would I give lunch

Initially, have an over early lunch.

Keep him really, really busy from breakfast until about 10.30pm.
Then "lunch" at 10.30am
Nap at 11am
Substantial snack and milk when waking up.

Or the other way around. Substantial snack and milk before sleep, lunch upon waking.

I would do dinner at 11, nap 11:30

Our routine is like this:

Up for the day between 6.30-7.15 and breakfast after that
Lunch 11.15/11.30
1.5 hour nap somewhere between 12-2pm
Big snack/small meal around 2-3pm
Dinner 5.45/6pm
7pm milk, bath, books
7.30 bed

I started off the transition by doing lunch around 11am, and it’s gotten later as she’s gotten older.

It’s worth remembering that if you’re sending him to nursery soon then they’ll probably do a routine that is really similar to that. My DD has ‘dinner’ at 3.30 at nursery, so around the same time I do a ‘big snack’, and then has actual dinner when we get home.

Oops! I’m northern, dinner meaning lunch 🙊