HELP- 14 month old will not nap

knottie4e05fad182336f3e

My once-wonderful sleeper/napper has completely changed! Around the 4th of July, she got pretty sick, and since then she won’t hardly nap to save her [my] life. She was taking two naps so I thought I’d lengthen her wake windows and drop to one nap. She would nap for 30 minutes. Tried to go back to 2 naps- sleeps for 30 minutes either way. No matter what I do, she hardly naps for more than 30 minutes!! GAHHH!

Overnight, she ROCKS it. Goes to bed and stays asleep all night, usually 7:30pm-ish to 6:30/7am. It’s just her naps that have been awful. 

Any other moms ever go through this? Is there something I’m missing? Is she just done napping? I think it’s way to early for her to give up naps but I don’t know what else to do!

noortle

How’s the sleep been going lately? I see it’s been a while since posting!
My 14 month old goes through phases like this, where she will be tired and cranky, eventually fall asleep with help, then wake up after 30min. It happened after we went camping for a week, which was a huge change in her routine, so I think things like that can throw them off. Other times, she will go through a phase of having multiple 2 hour naps in a day and still sleeping all night. I think it just depends on their stage of development and whether or not their routine has been interrupted.
I just try and watch the wake windows and my baby’s cues. If she’s still happy, maybe she doesn’t need a nap. If she’s going nuts, sometimes walking in the baby carrier, going on a car ride, or bouncing on a yoga ball gets her at least SOME sleep. She’ll settle back into a rhythm soon, but sickness, teething, routine change, new skills, etc etc etc call all mess with it!

knottieaa2ab28c5bba4036

Create a Relaxing Nap Routine: Try setting up a regular pre-nap routine for your little one. It could be as simple as reading a short book, dimming the lights, or maybe even humming a favorite tune. This helps them kinda know it’s time for a nap, even if they resist at first. Having the same steps each day might make things smoother, even if it's not perfect every time.

knottief055529d05fa1bb3

What really helped us was going super dark with the room (we got those sticky blackout blinds) and extending the wind-down routine to about 30 mins. I also found that pushing the morning nap a bit later (around 10am instead of 9:30) made a huge difference - it's like they need that extra tiredness to stay asleep.