Transition from 2 naps to 1 nap

Thanks for all the pre-birthday wishes, ladies.

Babyshoes, I'm also trying to take it one day at a time. If only I could get our nanny to understand...sigh!

Charnenay, Lilly is an early bird, she is normally up for the day between 5 and 5:30 a.m. (yes, lovely, isn't it?!). That's why she's normally quite tired by mid-morning and I think that's why she'd rather drop her afternoon sleep, even though I'd prefer for her to sleep some time after lunch and not before.

Yaz, what we are doing with Emily is trying to stretch the time she stays awake before her morning nap a little bit everyday. So, she will eventually end up with 1 nap somewhere in the afternoon and that way she is not over-tired at night - Good luck!

Yaz - Happy Birthday to Lilly for tomorrow!

I am going through the same thing with Luke and napping and dropping naps!

I have dropped the afternoon nap. He naps in the morning (sometimes long - sometimes not so long)...

Some days he is so pooped by 6pm that he goes down - and sometimes he will sleep from 6-ish on wards or be up an hour or two later and then all hell is loose when its bed time again...

At the moment with him it is alot of touch and go and I am still working on a routine that works for both of us...

But I honestly pretty much let him do his own thing now until about 7:30 or 8-ish and then get him to settle for bed time..

Thanks ladies. Never a dull moment, hey? And why do all the clever books speak about "dropping the morning nap" when in actual fact it seems like most LOs drops their afternoon naps?

Thanks for your advice!
xx

All I can say is GOOD LUCK!!! Its a horrible time! We had a nightmarish 2 weeks of fighting about the afternoon nap before I just gave in and let him skip it. Then followed another 2 weeks of terror before he settled into the new routine with one nap in the morning and got used to being awake for longer in the afternoon. Then things got back to "normal", this was when he was 11 months old.

When the afternoon nap was finally completly dropped, the morning nap did become longer and later by itself, so instead of going down at 10 am, he would do so at about 12 and sleep for +- 2 hours. So I started giving him a snack at 11 and again when he woke up, because he skipped lunch every day. But the later nap meant being a more pleasant kid in the afternoon.

Now we are getting to the point where he doesn't want to sleep at all during the day! So it starts all over again... He has just turned two...

Yaz when my son went through this phase (he's now 20 months) I moved his bedtime routine up a bit so that he went to bed a bit earlier on the days when he didn't have an afternoon nap (probably more for me than for him!). Otherwise I would just suggest keeping stimulation low (no tv, calm activities like reading) in the late afternoon on these days and know that this phase passes. My son adjusted to one nap quite quickly.

Happy birthday to Lilly for tomorrow!

Hi ladies,

I see this thing of toddlers having sleep/ nap issues is quite common when I look at other recent posts

Lilly (turning 1 tomorrow) is desperately trying to get rid of one of her naps, but it looks like she's not quite ready yet physically. Every second day or so, she only sleeps once a day, mostly in the morning or before lunch for an hour max and then doesn't want to know anything about napping for the rest of the day. Needless to say, she is completely over the edge and out of control by the time we start her bed time routine Especially our nanny struggles with her, as our little madam is really strong and physically fights her off when she wants to make her fall asleep. So what happens is our nanny just lets her do her thing which means going buck-wild By the time I come home from work, it is too late for her to nap cause she'll never go to bed at 7/8 p.m. after just having recharged.

Any advice how to bridge this transition period from 2 to 1 naps? Any nap strategies or routines that have worked for you?

Thanks xx

P.S.: I'm not into any form of sleep training so that option is out.