Please advise on how to manage transition from two naps to one?

[ExistentialistCat]

Please share your wisdom, oh Mumsnetters!

Nearly 11 month-old DD was previously napping pretty reliably at around 9.30 for half an hour to an hour and at around 2 for an hour to an hour and a half. She was fairly easy to settle at night. These last few days she's been fiercely resisting the morning nap but she's also very difficult to put down in the afternoon, and has been more fractious at bedtime and throughout the day.

How do I manage this? Try to keep her up until 12.30 or so and hope for a longer sleep then? Gradually move the morning nap later and later and hope for an amalgamation of the two naps? And what about fitting milk and lunch around all this (particularly, making sure she isn't too knackered to eat anything at lunchtime)?

I liked things being vaguely predictable for a little while; now I feel like I'm starting again from scratch!

She's overtired probably in the afternoon which is why she is fighting that nap. I would suggest a drive/walk in the late morning may be the answer - DS now sleeps 11:30 till 1 - was on 9:30 - 10:15 and then 2ish till 3 six months ago.

Which means he eats lunch late, but hey, I get to eat mine that way, which works for me

ExistentialistCat we had exactly the same problem. I moved her morning nap to a bit later for a while and made sure that it was only about 40 mins or so for a while then it got shorter and she started sleeping longer in the afternoon for a bit. Then she started nursery and I noticed that she went down to one nap pretty quickly. So its a good idea to keep moving the morning one later and maybe when it get to about half 10 try and keep her up for an hour or so and give her an earlier lunch and hope that she goes down after lunch for a nap - it does take time but it worked for us. hope this helps

Thank you, whomovedmychocolate and crawley.

Apologies for the delay in replying but it's been a mad couple of days, mostly because of sleep... It seems to be all over the place and rather unpredictable at the moment but I'm trying to go with DD's cues and hope that the longer, later nap comes in time.

Thanks again.

We've just gone through this with DD (16 months now). I stopped putting her down in the morning until she seemed really tired, so it ended up being a bit later, maybe 10.30 ish. The sometimes she'd still have a short nap later in the afternoon but fairly quickly stopped wanting that one.

We had a period where she was napping from about 11.30-1.30 so ended up having quite a late lunch, but now she tends to have lunch first and naps after from about 1.30-3.30pm.

It does seem a bit choatic at first when you think you've got a nice routine sorted which works for everyone, but it didn't seem to take too long for DDs naps to go down to one fairly reliable one.

I got some good advice on moving to one nap here - Is Baby Ready to Drop a Nap?

What I did was make the morning nap the main one and keep pushing it along - then go for a short nap later in the pm. So nap at 10:30 for a few hours and then a 30 min cat nap at about 3ish. Bed at 7:30 worked really well and now the morning nap has moved along a bit more we have some days without a pm cat nap and some days with.

Hope that makes sense. lol!