What was the transition to one nap like for your child?

[beckington]

Just wondering what the transition from two naps to one was like for you and your little one? Did it take months? How did you know they needed to go to one nap? Did you help it along? How old were they?

Ds2 is 13 months and his naps have gone crazy - some days he has a 2-hour morning nap and a 30-60 minute nap in the afternoon, other days a short nap in the morning and another short one in the afternoon, other days one 2-hour nap in the middle of the day, and other days just one 30-minute nap in the middle of the day! It's all over the place and I'm thinking maybe he's transitioning, but I don't know if I should help it along at all - if this is an in between stage it's driving me nuts. I don't want to push him if he's not ready though - I really believe sleep is important for a healthy baby, and his night sleep sucks! Bah!

Words of wisdom always appreciated. :)

[wehrli]

my DS is only 10mo but i'm taking notes!

[katelove]

It was pretty easy for us. It was all child-led, I didn't encourage her to give it up. She just stopped going to sleep in the afternoon. I would lay down and feed her as usual and she would feed and then get up again. It was much harder on me that her, I liked those two breaks each day 

[brneyedmama]

Our's was relatively easy too, but I think we're still in the middle of it -so who knows.  Essentially, it seems like they change their sleep pattern on average every three months anyway, so you're always going through some transition.  With DD, she was about 14 months when she stopped going down easily for her afternoon nap.  The morning one would happen no prob, but the afternoon would be a total struggle, and after an hr of trying I would give up.  The problem was she was tired by 10:30 but it was too early for a nap, because she would be awake by 12:30 and a disaster again by 4:00 or 4:30 which was then too late for a nap and too early for bedtime.  So we did have to tweak it a little bit.  Essentially I would "push" her a little bit each week in 15 minute increments.  The timing still moves around a bit depending on how night time sleep went, but it's usually between 12:00-12:30 and lasts 1.5-2 hrs.

They're all different.  How long does Ds sleep for at night? When's bed time and wake time? Night time sleep and good naps definitely  play off of each other.  We're going through a new phase with night time sleep where DD simply fights going down. she doesn't want to be told when she has to do something, and has just realized that the crib is an actual barrier from her getting to where she wants to go. SO for the past two weeks it takes over 2 hrs to get her to go down, because she's too busy throwing everything out of the crib, dancing around, etc etc.  Anyway, I don't think I made much sense, but for what it's worth, you're not alone!

[BabySmurf]

For us the transition happened a little before a year, and I think it lasted about a month.  Like the others, it started with DS not wanting to take his first nap, and taking FOREVER to go down.  At first I didn't realize what was happening, so I just kept trying to get him to sleep, and that would push his afternoon nap really late, and sometimes he would skip it, and be really cranky in the evenings.  Or he would take a late nap, and want to be up really late.  It was a cranky transition, but once I "got" what was happening, distraction worked wonders! Since his sleeping was so off, it was affecting our days, so unless he really seemed like he needed the early nap, I would not try to put him to sleep until later in the morning.  Like the PP mentioned, this happened relatively slowly.  Then, since it was still warm out while he was working through this, I would take him to the playground in the afternoon so that he would be distracted, which made the afternoons much easier for me to handle.  The other thing that happened during this time was that he was way tired in the evenings, so I started putting him to bed about two hours earlier, so really he was getting the same amount of sleep each day, just organized differently.  Eventually he ended up pushing his bed time back to his old time (8pm), and still takes one good nap per day.  Every so often, particularly when he is sick, he still needs a little power nap in the afternoon, but over all this works well for us!