Re-Establishing Naps at 14-15mo?
jmugirl38
member
So I jumped the gun and thought DD was ready to go to one nap a day as she is about 14.5 mo old...after a week of horrible results, I tried her back to one nap in the AM about 3-3.5 hours after waking and another in PM about 3.5 hours from the end of the AM one. She caught back on to this schedule, mainly I think to catch up on sleep, but the last few days has been napping maybe only 20 minutes in the morning and that.is.it...
Have moved her bedtime and she is going to sleep anywhere from 6:45-7:15pm and STTN until about 6:30-7, which I am not complaining about. I just keep referencing back to the books (Healthy Sleep Habits, and The No Cry Nap Solution), and both talk about how important the day time sleep is for development...I feel like I am failing at this nap thing.
Anyone out there have any good advice/steps to deal with the nap transition? Have you found it to be better to just get baby on a one nap a day schedule and if so how/when did you go to it? I appreciate any advice, I am beating myself up over the non-napping and surrounded by others whose toddlers "never napped"...I know DD needs the sleep because she is way more pleasant and alert when she does get a nap...
Re: Re-Establishing Naps at 14-15mo?
Put the books down and follow your own kid's cues. I had a kid that as a newborn wouldn't nap more than 2 hours a day, but slept great at night. As a toddler she's transitioned to later bedtimes and a decent nap.
She did it all on her own and with me following her cues.
Basically, if she's tired, put her down. Leave her there until she's awake. Every kid is so different.
And the one nap thing does take a while. Somedays she wanted 2, somedays not. It was a good 2 months until we were completely at one nap.
We went through something very similar when K was around 12 months. She absolutely fought her naps so we pushed her morning nap and she slept 1x. That lasted a week or two, then she seemed to go back to her old habits and wanting to sleep early in the am and again in the afternoon. So I thought ok we're back to two.
but then a week or two later she started fighting her naps again (kind of like you said, after catching up on some sleep) and so I started putting the down just once again. And we never looked back.
Transition to 1 nap is not a quick switch, it is a process. So first of all, your LO has to learn to consistently last longer awake, till nap time. The next step will be lengthening that one nap. For K that was the hardest part. Previously she would take 2 naps of 1 hr each. So when she went to 1 nap she still slept 1 hr and then was super crabby in the evening. But I did not cave and kept conditions just perfect, dark room, same temperature, same bedtime, and after a couple of weeks she relaxed and started taking 2 hour long naps. Don't give in to pushing bedtime to an earlier time. At least for us hat would have backfired because she would the wake earlier in the morning. Just give yourself time and eventually it will work out.
This. We've never had problems with dd's sleep schedule. People ask me how I've done it all the time. We don't have a problem with her schedule because she doesn't have one. When she's tired, she takes a nap. She has her own pseudo schedule that I have learned to anticipate, and this changes gradually every once in a while. She wavered between one and two naps for a good month or so before she finally got to the point she was comfortable with just the one. I think following your child's cues instead of the clock makes for a happier mom and toddler and a more peaceful household.
Thanks for everyone's advice...I started logging her "patterns" this week and finding that she is more likely to take one nap middle of day. I think I originally did not time it right-was putting her down either right before lunch (so she would get up too soon to eat) or was waiting too long and then she was cranky. The last 3-4 days, have put her down after lunch and just adjusting the lunchtime around her wake-up and breakfast times....seems to be working :-)
My main concern always is just making sure I try to read her cues but once she hit 14 months she started sending mixed signals LOL