Serious nap fighting- what should i do?!

[KellyandBean]

My DD is about to turn 10 mos old. She has always had a hard time falling asleep. We have had a decent nap routine of reading, nursing, rocking with the binky and lights out. Sometimes it works and then other times she has fought it. In the warmer months i would take her for a walk in her stroller to get her to go to sleep on the times she fought it. Now that it is REAL cold out we aren't doing that anymore. Something seems to be going on with her- be it a developmental thing- learning to walk or finally starting teething? But she just fights fights fights naps. I do the usual routine and she arches her back and tries to look around. I put her in her crib because she is obviously not into the rocking and in a few mins sure enough she is crying and i go back to rocking her. Sometimes she goes down with this and other times we do this back and fourth game until she is sleeping. But recently she can stay awake for a LOT longer then she used to. Twice now she has had days where she just did one nap because i didn't want to deal with it. Unfortunatly it resulted in her sleeping very poorly the following night. I know that she isn't ready to drop a nap yet as she often goes down easy for the morning nap 2 hours after getting up and will sleep for an hour or more...but now things are getting pushed back and back and back with her naps. Basically this morning she was up at 8am, morning nap was 10-11 and had my eyes glued to her to watch for sleepy signs for the afternoon nap. Sure enough by 3.5 hours awake time i saw the eye rub so i went to reading an nursing. We did the up and down thing for an hour and a half!! She got to crying pretty hard but would just NOT go to sleep. So i said screw it and we got up. I put her in the ergo and for the first time in her life she fell asleep watching TV. I was suprised she just went to sleep without a fuss this way. So what should i do? I know she isn't old enough for one nap a day (and she will sleep in the car if i take her for a ride so obviously she is tired) but she just wants to stay awake until she passes out. Should i try to change her nap routine so that she doesn't have all the bad associations that she seem to have with rocking? Anyone have this problem before and how did you deal with it?

[Knitting Mama]

If she fell asleep in the Ergo once, can you try changing up her nap routine by putting her in the Ergo and then doing chores or bouncing on the ball or whatever to get her to sleep? I think you might be onto something with the change of routine.

[TSomm]

I have to laugh.  I just about posted the exact same thread at the exact same time.  Let's watch each other's replies for help.

http://www.mothering.com/community/forum/thread/1285314/how-did-you-know-if-your-lo-was-ready-to-drop-to-1-nap

[KellyandBean]

So good to know i am not alone!  Have you tried one nap a day before for your DD? I'm really reluctant to want to do it because she will be awake for 4 hours until she passes out in the morning but then is only able to do another 5 hours in the afternoon making a total of 9 hours awake time for her which just isn't enough so she gets up to play at odd hours of the night or just sleeps really fitfully. I'm pretty sure both of our LOs are just going through a pre-walking phase but it SUCKS. I think i might try to think up a new nap time routine and see if that helps...

[flavorfull1]

For us, we have to walk him to sleep in the Ergo when he gets into a phase like this.  When he isn't trying to figure something out, which when are they not? I rock him to sleep or he goes to sleep just lying in bed next to me.  When it is harder to get him to sleep, I have music that we always listen to and I walk him back and forth in the Ergo. It gets him to sleep 95% of the time. I do think it is partly the age, my LO is almost 11 mo.

[Dootsmama]

My little man will be 10 months old this week and has also stopped napping willingly. When he has these spurts, I pace with and bounce him and hum until he dozes off and then I put him down. He has never been a big napper either, but I used to be able to put him in the crib while he was just kinda sleepy, give him a paci, and he would dose off. They learn so much during this time - It's hard on their sleep patterns.