Time to drop to 1 nap or am I missing something??

[FayeTea]

Hello! Sorry another nap transition question from me.

TLDR
Nearly 12 mo refusing afternoon nap. To drop to 1 or drastically shorten morning nap?

Full version
DS is 1 next week! Apart from a bit of a blip at 10 months (great advice given here) sleeps been pretty good. We had a good routine of:

Awake between 06:00 and 07:00, average about 06:30
Nap 1 09:30-10:30
Nap 2: 13:45-15:15
Bedtime 07:30. Usually sleeps through, sometimes if teething or has a cold may have a feed. Self settles in cot. Will nap in buggy or car.

The last week though things have gone wrong! He just will not take the second nap! Until yesterday he was rolling around for ages but eventually went off (more like 14:15). Yesterday and today though I’ve just given up! He’s learnt to sit up from lying down so just keeps doing it and then pulling to standing in the cot and laughing. I gave up after 30 mins of trying and got him up - I can hear him playing downstairs now with his dad happy as Larry, so not obviously tired, but he was a mess yesterday by tea time!

Seems young to drop to 1 nap (even though I asked about doing it at 10 months 🙈). Should I just go ahead and try 1 nap or would I be better cutting that morning nap to like 20 or 30 mins? If it’s 1 nap what time should I do it?

Thank you!

It's young for one nap days, but not unheard of.

However it sounds like you're more suffering from the regression that goes alongside learning to pull to standing in the cot. This is really common and a phase many go through, when they start refusing to lie down in the cot. This in itself isn't an indication baby doesn't need the sleep - just that they are in this phase.

It's a behavioural issue rather than a sleep issue. Baby needs to learn that while he can (is physically able to) pull to standing, that sleep time in the cot is not the time or place where this is permitted. It may well be the first time you come across needing to directly stop unwelcome behaviour, rather than just avoiding the issue or distracting from unwelcome behaviour. So it can be a challenging thing to deal with. But something you have to tackle (easily done with just repeated enforcment - ie just keep lying him down sixty zillion times).

TLDR - Teach him that he must lie down in the cot at sleep time. Only lie down, standing is not acceptable. If he then continues to not sleep (while accepting he must lie down), then drop to 1 nap per day.

I'd shorten the morning nap. That's what we did with DS around that age (I know lots of people who let their child drop to one nap around 12m and almost all of them retrospectively realise it was too soon and they inadvertently made their lives harder - so I was cautious!). And sometimes even now at 17m we still do 2 naps some days (if he wakes earlier than usual or has had a disturbed night with teething etc). Test it out with a 20-30 minute morning nap and see how you go. I think I did it quite slowly and worked my way down to 45m, then 40, then 30, etc but I don't think that was necessary!

Do you wake your DS from his morning nap or does he naturally wake after an hour? You could also obviously try just letting him sleep longer (or even attempting a resettle) for the first nap if the short morning nap doesn't work.

I think some people talk about a sleep regression around 12m too, although we didn't experience that particularly, so it could be a "ride it out" situation.

Sorry for not giving any particularly sound advice, unfortunately it is just one of those things where you have to try out different solutions until you find what works (for now )

We went for one nap at 12 months with both of ours for pretty much the same reason. They were refusing the second nap and then being really miserable.

If you do it, you'll probably need to bring the second nap forwards though.