transitioning from 2 naps to 1 nap a day

[drako]

DD is 16 months old and hasn't taken her morning nap in over 2 weeks. I put her in her crib since she clearly appears tired in the morning but she just fights it. I watch her on the video monitor and she rubs her eyes but won't lay down. She was a good napper and taking two naps a day for a total of about 3 hours a day (1.5 each nap). I know they outgrow two naps but I can't get her to take a good afternoon nap. I am lucky if she takes an hour nap. I have tried right after lunch, an hour after lunch, a half our after lunch and nothing seems to work. She sometimes takes an hour before she settles down to nap. She is so miserable in the afternoon and evening that I am beginning to pull my hair out. She has major meltdowns in the late afternoon or early evening. She is obviously so tired. I have adjusted her bedtime by putting her to bed an hour earlier or a half hour earlier and it still seems she falls asleep around 8 o' clock. Is this normal during the transition period? She is also getting molars but they are almost all the way through so I don't think that is the problem. She wakes up between 6 and 6:30 in the morning, so I think she clearly isn't getting enough sleep if she is falling asleep around 8 and only taking about an hour nap total. Any advice?

[Katigre]

What about putting her down right before lunchtime? When DD transitioned out of two naps she settled on one nap right in the middle (11:00am-2:00pm).

How nap transition works isn't that they just stop napping in the morning and take their regular afternoon nap, it's that they combine both naps into one and it gets shortened in duration.

It is hard to have her fall asleep during lunch so what we do is give her a substantial snack both before and after her nap (basically splitting up her lunch food into two smaller meals instead).

HTH!

[drako]

Thanks Katigre! Since she hasn't been napping in the morning, I have moved her nap earlier. That is what I can't figure out. When she was taking two naps she was napping at 9:00 and 2:00. Now that she has dropped the morning nap I have moved it up after lunch. Instead of feeding her at 11:30ish, I moved lunch to 11:00 and than have tried various times after that. I just assumed she would nap longer than 40 min. to an hour since she was napping a total of 2.5-3 hours total throughout her 2 naps. Since she only sleeps 10-10.5 hours at night so I also thought she would nap a little longer as well. Maybe it's just an adjustment thing and will be happier once her little body figures it out.

[Katigre]

I would try napping her at 10:30-11:00am and not any later than that - based on when she wakes up and her old nap times, 11:00 would be pushing it before she's overtired.

[twowhat?]

When our girls were that age, they'd sleep 8pm until 6:30am and only take 1 hours worth of naps. When they took two naps, each nap was only 30 minutes. Once I transitioned them to 1 nap, then they napped for an hour. It sucked - an hour to myself each day was not enough. But - one thing I noticed was that it seemed that 1 continuous hour of sleep made them more "rested" than two 30-minute naps - they would wake up SUPER CRANKY from these 30-minute naps...DD1 would wake up and SCREAM for an hour every day. It was NOT pleasant.

So, I guess I would try going to one nap - you just have to be careful to be sure that she is truly awake from 6:30am until 12:30pm (if that is the time you choose to put her down). Even a catnap in the car would ruin it. During the transition period I couldn't take the girls ANYWHERE in the car before their nap. It was a painful transition that took a few weeks, during which they would get tired in the mid-morning, when their AM nap used to be. I found that putting them in front of the TV during that time helped:bag

eta: 11-11.5 hours of TOTAL sleep in a 24-hour period was normal for our girls, and is in the normal range for that age according the Dr Ferber. I think in his book the range of total sleep for an 18mo is 11-12.5. YES, it SUCKED to be at the lower end of that range.