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Is 12 month old nearing 1 nap transition?

3 replies

Sagittarius25 · 07/11/2024 13:05

DS turned 1 last week and we've seen changes in both day and night sleep and I can't work out if it's a bit of 12 month regression or whether he's edging closer to 1 nap.

Naps - used to self settle for naps and sleep until woken but recently needs gentle settling from us (light bum pats etc) to go to sleep, but then goes off quite quickly. It's now hit or miss whether he will do a 30-40 min nap and not connect to a new sleep cycle, or connect fine and I wake him after an hour as we are capping naps at 2x 1hr. Occasionally he will settle himself to sleep for naps, but then still hit or miss as to whether he will do short or longer nap

Night sleep - previously been a very good night sleeper and we had months of him sleeping through, but recently have night wakes sometimes, where he seems v upset, give calpol in case teething etc. and then can be hard to settle but goes back off. He's also waking earlier but not too much of a diff, used to be 6:30-7am now 6-6:30am. Nights are slowly getting a bit better, we've had two nights in a row of sleeping through after 1.5 weeks of disruption most nights.

He has been going through some hard separation anxiety and I think this has contributed to him wanting to be settled at naps. I can often resettle him after waking 30-40 mins in a nap but not always.

current schedule is:

morning rise 6:45
nap 1: 10-11ish
nap 2: 14:30-15:30 although sometimes doesn't seem tired enough for this and can therefore run later by the time he's asleep
bed: 19:00-19:15 (he's always ready for bed even if last wake window is slightly shorter than the second and self settles for night sleep no issue)

I do feel like the day is maxed out but am scared to try and move to 1 nap in case he's not ready as I know it can just create overtiredness (which he had the other week due to really bad naps and struggled to nap and was awake a lot in the night) also know the transition can be a messy one where not room for 2 naps but 1 isn't enough, so not sure how best to approach it.

any advice?

OP posts:
angelpie33 · 09/11/2024 06:06

At 12 months it is possible he's ready for one nap, hard to say for sure. I think you could start by just committing to not resettling him if he wakes after 30/40mins at naptime and just accept and see what pattern he falls into if any, perhaps he will start to have one shorter and one longer nap.

Maybe he just doesn't need as much daytime sleep anymore even if he does stay on two naps for a while.
If you do that for a couple of weeks but he is still resisting the afternoon nap it may be you need to help him transition to one nap.

GiraffeTree · 09/11/2024 06:17

It's certainly possible that he's on the cusp of moving from two naps to one and that this is causing some sleep regression. My DC went down to one nap at around 14 months, but there was a tricky transition period as they moved from two to one. As @angelpie33 says, if he wakes early from morning nap don't try to resettle him (to reinforce the message that the later nap will become the important one). Mine ended up having some days with one nap and some with two for a while.

Helloflo · 09/11/2024 06:19

My youngest gave up naps at 14 months. She is 16 now and loves a nap!
I just used to put her in bed at 7 and she would sleep until 7.

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