when did your go down to 1 nap? how do you know when they're ready?

[mrsflux]

ds is 13 months. he's waking at 5 ish atm. won't go back to sleep (unless in our bed which i'm against), struggling to stay awake till 9.30 for nap and then has another at 1.30ish. each about an hour.
he can just about cope when he's only had 1 nap at nursery. (he's only stopped napping twice there since easter)

is he ready for 1 nap?

how can you tell?

help! i can't cope with days that start so early!

anyone??

Hi, I am im the same situation with my 14 month old DD. To be honest we are just going with the flow at the moment (which is alien to me as she has had a pretty rigid nap schedule for the last few months!). She had been waking at 5amish for weeks and we had just been living with it - as she was normally in bed for 6pm then I was just thankful that we had the evenings to ourselves and could go to bed early!
However, now we are having some days when she has 2 naps (when she wakes before 6am) and these tend to be 9.30ish and then 3pmish) and other days where she only has one because she isn't ready to go down in the morning (like today when she managed to stay up until 12 because she didn't wake until 6.30am). I don't want her to just have a morning nap as it makes the afternoon too long and then affects bedtime/nightime sleep.
She has just started nursery and will only have one nap there so I am hoping that if I follow the same routine things will settle down a little bit. I'm also hoping that the sleeping past 6am becomes the norm!!
I think that if your DS is still happy to go down for his 2 naps and is having an hour then I would stick with it. I think signs of them only needing one nap are when they won't settle for their morning nap becauise they aren't tired or the morning nap starts impacting the afternoon nap which becomes later and later in the day. I am afraid that we never managed to solve the early mornings they just seem to have stopped on their own. Have you tried earlier / later bedtimes? Will he go back down in his own bed if you give him some milk?
xx

Yeah he still likes his 2naps. Not moving bed time as 7.30 is his limit and I like our evenings.
I think living with the early starts might just be the answer. I don't want to give a bottle as I know he's not hungry as he waits till 7 for breakfast and often just picks at it.
Has a bad nigt last night- I was up from 2.05 till 5.30!!! Including a desperate midnight drive downthe motorway! Think he had a tummy ache tho. Poor sausage!
It'll b 2 naps today as he only had 50mins at half 9. He was hanging by half 9 and fell asleep on me on the short trip up the stairs!

Hi Mrs Flux, we are having the same issues at the moment. Some days my 13m old DD has two naps, some days she has one. On the days she only has one she definitely sleeps later - usually about 6.30. On the days she has two she is tending to wake at about 5/5.30. The trouble is that if she needs to sleep in the daytime it's not worth trying to stop her as she gets increasingly grumpy. So I'm not sure there's an awful lot to be done other than to ride out the early starts. I read in Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child that the 2 to 1 nap transition can be tricky - it says in there that the switch usually happens between about 15-18 months. So I'm not sure I really have any useful advice for you other than to say you're not alone ... Hope you got a better night last night anyway, that last one didn't sound fun.

Um, we've always just gone with the flow! It's only my first who ever got regular naps anyway - the other three had to grab them when they could!

So some days they'd have three or four catnaps, and others just one big one. Then all of a sudden, they get to a point where I've realised that if they sleep later than a certain time in the afternoon, they don't go to sleep easily in the evening and at that point I've had to make sure they get a nap at a reasonable time and for long enough to keep them going until bedtime. Thankfully that rigid phase only lasts a few months before they can drop their nap completely and all I have to do is keep them awake on afternoon car journeys!

Hi mrsflux - we've been having exactly the same with 12 month old DS.

The 5am wake ups were absolutely killing me so we've rejigged his napping schedule.

He was doing exactly the same as your DS - waking up at 5am and then catching up on sleep for an hour or so as early as 8.30 or 9am, then another long nap after lunch.

So I've pushed back his morning nap as much as I can to 10am (hell the first couple of days) and restricted it to half an hour. If he sleeps any longer than half an hour then it has a knock on effect on the timing of his next nap and then on bedtime. He goes down again at about 1/1.30pm but I'll only let him sleep for an hour and a half. This sees him through til bedtime (which we've pushed back to 7.30pm).

I've worked out that if he sleeps for more than 2 hours during the day he sleeps less well at night. But any less than 2 hours and he gets overtired and then will also sleep badly.

The first time we tried this he woke up at 6.30am!!! It was miraculous after all the 5am wakes. I was so happy I woke DH up at 6am to tell him DS was still aslepp - DH was not impressed.

Anyway, it seems to be working. Being so rigid goes against everything I've done so far, but I'm back at work as of Monday so needed to get him sleeping a bit better.

So far his total sleeptime has actually increased since we've been restricting his naps during the day. He was sleeping for about 12 hours in total, but now he's edging past 13 which is great.

I think in a couple of months he'll be able to stay awake until lunchtime and then will have one long nap after lunch but at the moment he needs the mini-nap in the morning to keep him going.

Obviously what works for one baby won't necessarily work for another - I was scared to try restricting naps/waking him up in case he got overtired but it does seem to be working for us so far.

thanks ladies! glad i'm not alone!

i'm trying restricting day time naps to no more than 2.5h a day (prob nearer 2 really) and also doing PUPD and shh ing again at night.
i realised last night he wakes up and wants cuddles in the night. it's not teeth or anything else like that as he stops as soon as you start to lift him.
lst night he woke at 1.15 so i did PUPD for a bit and he went off to sleep after about 30mins. not too bad.
he then woke/ moaned at 3 so i shhh-ed and he settled quickly and the same again at 4.30.
woke for the day at 5.40

not too bad really - well compared to the infamous midnight drive!
his naps today have been 9.00 for 1h10 (i woke him as we had to go out). i tried to put him down awake but he dropped off a bit on the way upstairs . this afternoon he fell asleep in the car at 1.45 and will be up again in shortly (by 3.00 prob)

then it'll be bed at 7.30

yesterday was a nursery day and again had 1 nap in am. he was hanging by 7 so had early bed after meltdown in bath! i think he's not sleeping at nursery as its too exciting as he's moving uo to the bigger kids room so doesn't want to stop for sleep!

Both mine gave up morning nap at 10months, just made lunchtime earlier at say 11.30ish and then 2.5 hour nap after that, made a big difference to night sleeping in our house, HTH

he just won't last till then tho! he was down at 9, 9.15, 9.30 for the last few days and hardly ever makes it past 10.30