How did you transition to 1 nap from 2?

[cookiemonster80]

I know this should go in the sleep forum but I'm really hoping for more traffic here and we are pretty stumped on what to do.

Dd2 is 15 months, sleeps 12 solid hours at night and seems to be getting ready to drop a nap. Dd2 wakes at 7, sleeps for an hour at 10am then for 30-45 min at 2pm. I'm thinking she should do a longer nap in the middle of the day instead since neither nap is very long. We've tried it a few days with disastrous results. I should mention that dd2 has quite a difficult temperament and is never in a 'good' mood even on good days so you can imagine my trepidation to make a change in her schedule.

Does it sound like she is ready to you? If so how can I make it as easy a transition as possible?

[BabyBearsMom]

DD1 just stopped napping in the morning when she was done. DD2 is in transition. Some days she wants to nap in the AM and sometimes she doesn't. I think kids just do it when they are ready.

[amom526]

She sounds ready. You could just let it progress naturally, but what we did was to slowly shorten ds1 Morning nap. This only works if your child does well being woken from a nap. Another option is to slowly put him down later and later for the morning nap, and after a couple weeks, the nap should start getting longer. Ds1 went to 1 nap at that age, and he could barely make it past 1130. Eventually we moved the nap to 12 where it stayed for a while.
Whatever you do, I think it's just a cranky time, especially for cranky babies. But when you get to that consistent long mid-day nap, it will all be ok (hopefully that happens soon!)

[queenmama]

DD is almost 15 months as well and has dropped her second nap for the most part.

She sleeps 10-11 hours at night. Her morning nap is 2-3 hours after she wakes up and also lasts 2-3 hours. Once in awhile she'll sleep during her late-afternoon nursing session, but not very often.


Lara

[okinawama]

We did a short catnap in the morning of about 30 minutes (usually out on my morning walk or I'd time our errands at that time so that he could nap in the car), and then since the 30 minutes wasn't as restorative, they were much tired much earlier and would go down for another nap about 2hours after waking from the cat nap.
Our day went like this
A: 7
Cat nap: 10-1030
nap: 1:00-330
Bed time: 730/8

We had that schedule for about a month, and then we cut out that morning catnap, and went one long nap around 1200.

[TxCat]

She sounds ready. You could just let it progress naturally, but what we did was to slowly shorten ds1 Morning nap. This only works if your child does well being woken from a nap. Another option is to slowly put him down later and later for the morning nap, and after a couple weeks, the nap should start getting longer. Ds1 went to 1 nap at that age, and he could barely make it past 1130. Eventually we moved the nap to 12 where it stayed for a while.
Whatever you do, I think it's just a cranky time, especially for cranky babies. But when you get to that consistent long mid-day nap, it will all be ok (hopefully that happens soon!)

I think this is more or less what we did - the afternoon nap kept moving up in time and the morning nap got shorter and shorter. I think I would aim for a lunch around 11 and then nap immediately after - hopefully after a week or so, the crankiness will go away.

[Momit]

We pushed the morning nap later and later, until he could make it to lunch time without it. Did lunch a little earlier and then afternoon nap a little earlier and it worked out after a couple of weeks.