Nap Transition - two naps to one

[LeaPea]

My daughter is just a little over a year old, and I think she is trying to drop her second nap. She used to take a nap around 10ish and around 3ish. For the last few weeks, it has taken over an hour to get her to go to sleep for her naps and bed. Her first nap is getting later and later, but she is still needing a later nap as well. It is totally affecting her night time sleep. She will take a late nap, and then want to stay up. She still wakes up at 7 am like clock work. Her naps are all over the place as far as length.

Is there anyway to help this transition? I don't remember what it was like when she went from 3 to 2 naps. I think that was an easier transition.

[whozeyermamma]

I've found that the transition takes time - like for a while they'll still do the 2 naps and some days they won't.

What I've done (and I'm doing for this baby) is that I just try to see how he's doing - if he seems really tired I'll try to put him down for his regular AM nap. If it doesn't work after about 15 minutes, I just give up and do other things. Then, I try to keep him up as long as I can so that 2nd nap is as close to 1 as possible.

For instance; yesterday he woke up super late - like 8 am so he only did 1 nap - from about 1 till about 3. This AM he seemed tired and did take his 9:30 - 10:45 nap. I'll put him down again around 3.

I think it just takes a while for them to completley transition over. Then depending on the 2 naps or 1 - bedtime etiher gets a little earlier or a little later.

[P.J.]

We're going through this right now too ~DS turned one about 4 weeks ago. He also used to nap regularly at around 10 for an hour and 5 or so for 30 minutes. Some days he has only one nap at about noonish, and some days he has a second in the late afternoon. I know what you're saying about when it's too late for the second nap though. It's really rough because there are days he'll be real tired and rubbing his eyes and could go down....but it's too late (after 5:30 or so) and if he napped then he'd be up til possibly 10pm. Sometimes at that time we are travelling home from a playdate or whatever and he just falls asleep and there's nothing I can do so I just surrender and go with the flow ~sometimes he still goes to bed at 8 even with the late second nap, other days he's up til 10.

On most days I try to make his first nap as late as possible (as close to noon or even 1:00 as I can) and then hope he's refreshed enough to make it til 8. It often works and his bedtime has definitely gotten earlier on that program (used to be 9:00, now is 8:00). I think it just takes time. This has been going on a couple months here, and I reckon it'll be another few weeks til this becomes a regular schedule.

Good luck!

[sunshinemum]

Originally Posted by whozeyermamma 

I've found that the transition takes time - like for a while they'll still do the 2 naps and some days they won't.

What I've done (and I'm doing for this baby) is that I just try to see how he's doing - if he seems really tired I'll try to put him down for his regular AM nap. If it doesn't work after about 15 minutes, I just give up and do other things. Then, I try to keep him up as long as I can so that 2nd nap is as close to 1 as possible.

For instance; yesterday he woke up super late - like 8 am so he only did 1 nap - from about 1 till about 3. This AM he seemed tired and did take his 9:30 - 10:45 nap. I'll put him down again around 3.

I think it just takes a while for them to completley transition over. Then depending on the 2 naps or 1 - bedtime etiher gets a little earlier or a little later.

My 10 month old is doing the same thing, I think. We approach it the same way as whozeyermamma