Ready for just one nap?

[KellyandBean]

I'm guessing there must be at least a few of you with a LO that only does one nap. I almost think my 10 mo old might be ready but i'm mixed on this, especially since i know they say usually babies don't drop to one nap until 12 months at the soonest. Lately she seems to be going a LOT longer between her naps then she used to. It is like instead of her morning nap getting shorter her naps are staying long but then getting really spaced out. Now on most day she will go 3 hours before the morning nap then 4.5 hours before the afternoon and another 4 or 4.5 before bedtime. The result = a WAY later bedtime then i would like, and not enough room for 11 or 12 hours she seems to still want at night. I say this because she seems to be in SO much of a better mood in the mornings when she gets 11 or 12 hours at night but is super grumpy with only 10 hours...but with all this awake time she doesn't have time to do more then 10 hours at night. Examples:

What she used to do:

awake: 6:00am

nap: 8ish-9

nap:12:00-2:00

bedtime:6pm (12 hours night sleep)

What she is doing lately:

awake: 6:00am (i have to wake her up so that she doesn't sleep in and will take a morning nap)

nap: 9:00-11:00

nap: 3:30pm-4:30 (she would sleep MUCH longer then 4:30 but i feel like i have to wake her up to get her to sleep at night before MY bedtime- she is cranky when i wake her from this nap as if she wanted to sleep longer)

bedtime: 8:30

I go to bed at 9pm some nights so that leaves me only a half hour to spend time with my husband which makes me super sad because this was my one part of the day i looked forward to. I don't think she should be going to bed so late!

And today she wouldn't even take her morning nap at all and took a nap from 11-1:30 instead. She was fussy this morning but i wonder if that wasn't only from getting 10 hours the night before. So what do you think? Do i just need to conform to the new shifted, much later then i'd like it- routine or do you think she is ready to move to just one nap?

[Knitting Mama]

I would give it a try, and the way I would do it is I would stop waking her up in the morning. Let her sleep as late as she wants to, and that way it's not a humongous day of little napping.

[heatheresc]

I'm in a similar boat.  My 10 month old used to always take a nap exactly 2 hours after waking, but now it's 3, even 4 hours before he will take a nap.  And it is usually a very long nap--1.5 to 2.5 hours, rather than his old 45 min to 1 hour nap.  But this schedule means his second nap time almost runs into his bedtime of 6:30 or 7!  I'm reluctant to officially drop him to one nap, especially since he isn't even one, but he does seem to be heading this way.  I figure as long as his overall sleep hours add up, it's ok....(and like your baby, OP, he sleeps 12 hours a night).  HTH!  Good luck!

[newmamalizzy]

Funny, I think I responded a few months ago when my baby was going through exactly the same sleep issues as yours, also.  DD is just now taking her first nap of the day.  At NOON!  Yesterday she napped from 11:30 - 1:20.  So, yes.  Same boat here again, except DD has not been getting particularly fussy, so instead of attempting to give her a second nap yesterday, I made sure she hit the bed at 6 p.m. instead of letting it lag closer to 7 as we've been doing lately.  In our case, I really don't think DD is ready for one nap a day.  Granted, she hasn't been fussy, but when she does head into her nap, she screams as though I'm sticking knives in her for about 10 minutes and then crashes.  That, to me, has overtired baby written all over it.  Before I let this one-nap thing take hold, I'm going to try ramping up our nap/bedtime routines a bit.  I think her new mobility has made life a lot more exciting so she just never pays attention to feelings of hunger/tiredness, etc, and we're going to have to incorporate a longer period of pre-nap downtime. 

Just as an aside, I feel like these days our napping issues are far more of an issue for me than the baby.  I want her to continue taking two naps primarily because 9 month olds can't really do enough to entertain themselves without making mom crazy for 6 straight hours!