should we go to one nap? (super looooong)

SanHawaii08

(XP to nov 2010)

here's the situation (note that E is not yet 11 months, he dropped his 3rd nap around 6 months, and he's never been a great napper):

- E's been fighting the second nap hard, for over 1.5 months now.  he'll fall asleep if you rock or nurse him to sleep, but otherwise, he'll yell for a bit, then sit in his crib and play for an hour.   however, if you rock or nurse him, he's out in 5-10 min. 

- E's first nap has started to get later and shorter.  He used to fall asleep in < 10 min, after 3.5 hours awake time.  now, we're still putting him down at the same time, but he'll play for 30 min before falling asleep.  and instead of sleeping 1.5 hours, he'll sleep for around an hour.

- We've stopped rocking him to sleep for the second nap, and now just let him hang out in his crib.  he usually poops after a while, so we go in and change him, then put him back down.  he'll be close to falling asleep around the 1 hr mark, so we leave him a bit longer - and he'll usually fall asleep a little while later.  by then, he's been awake for 4.5 or 5+ hours. 

- Now his second nap will last anywhere from 45 min to almost 1.5 hours, at which point we wake him up to protect his bedtime.  He's not in deep sleep at this point - he wakes up as soon as we open the door.

- Even with the super late 2nd nap, he'll go down for the night 2-2.5 hours later, and sleep for 11 hours. 

- He used to sleep for 11.5 hr overnight.  Overall, he's getting about 30 min less sleep per day than he used to get, before his 2nd nap went all wonky.

- The one day he completely skipped his second nap earlier this week, we put him down for bed 30 min earlier, and he slept in 30 min later - for a total of 12 hr overnight (it was amazing!).  So, roughly same total amount of sleep, as the other days when he takes a late 2nd nap.

so now my options are:

1. Go to one nap, given that his first nap is getting later and shorter, and his second nap is so late, and we usually have to wake him to protect bedtime.  If we do this, what's the best way?  Keep pushing his first nap later, and put him down for the second nap to see if he takes it, making sure he's up by a certain time before bed?  Or just go cold turkey and skip the second nap?  I really hope his first nap lengthens, if we go this route!  1 hr is not enough!.

2. On the other hand, maybe this would be a good way to push bedtime a little later, since it's ridiculously early right now (by 6) - I don't think it would help push his wake time later though, I wonder if he's just going into his night sleep whenever he falls asleep for the nap late.  But we could keep doing what we're doing, let him sleep until a certain time, and put him to bed later and see what happens.

3. Something else?

 

Married2MrWright

Sounds like working your way to one nap is a good idea...Libby was down to one at 12 months. Basically we dropped the morning nap and started putting her down after lunchtime. She sleeps 2-3 hours depending on the day (how early she woke, how active she's been, etc.)

So she goes down between 12:30-1:30 and wakes anywhere from 3:30-4:30 p.m. (on "late" days even at 5 p.m.) After her nap she has a light snack and we do dinner around 6-6:30 p.m. Since it's still light in the evening we'll play outside, take a walk, etc. and then start bathtime around 7:45 p.m. and the bedtime routine by 8 p.m. She's usually down in her crib between 8:30-9 p.m. and sometimes will stay awake in her crib for another 15-20 minutes. She generally sleeps from 9 p.m. until 8 a.m. although sometimes as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 9 a.m., again depending on the day.

As you can see, we have flexibility built into the day. If she's napped for 3 hours she'll likely go to bed closer to 9 p.m. If she awoke early and napped two hours then she's down around 8-8:15 p.m. She averages 13-13.5 hours total sleep in a 24 hour period.

I saw go with E's lead...try dropping the nap most days and see how he does. If he seems sleepy either offer 2 naps that day or let him nap for longer (put him down a little earlier if you're set on having the exact same bedtime each night). As you can see, we have a routine but not a really SET schedule and I am okay with that because Libby does well with the flexibility. If she didn't I am sure I'd be more strict with the times for nap/bedtime each day.

SanHawaii08

hrm, thanks lori.  i've heard that it's easier to be flexible with the timing of the nap when you're down to 1.  E's certainly not very flexible about it right now (or rather, wasn't, before his naps went all crazy recently).

so, today E skipped his first nap, fell asleep later than I would have wanted for his second nap (played for 45 min in his crib, after almost falling asleep during his earlier-than-usual lunch!), and slept for over 2 hours!  that's amazing, given that he hasn't been napping longer than 50+ min, and has almost never napped longer than 1.5 hours. 

so we're going to transition to 1 nap.  question now is - what time should the nap be?  what's a good amount of awake time?  roughly 5 hours?  problem then is that b/c he wakes up so early, it'd be before lunch!  and I'd really like him to go down after lunch - he has the longest stretch of not eating then.  he used to get up around 5:30, but it's been 5 for the past 2-3 weeks now.  I'm hoping we can get back to 5:30 soon, or better yet, 6 (at some point)!

so i'm not sure if we could try a super early lunch at like, 10:45, and put him down at 11:30?  fwiw, he used to take his first nap at 9.  i'm definitely open to having flexibility, but i'm not even sure what i should be aiming for at this point!  and this weekend, we're going to be traveling and at a wedding, so i'm expecting very little sleep - totally going to have to wing it, and we'll just see how things go next week, i guess!

lorem ipsum

SanHawaii08:

so i'm not sure if we could try a super early lunch at like, 10:45, and put him down at 11:30?  fwiw, he used to take his first nap at 9.  i'm definitely open to having flexibility, but i'm not even sure what i should be aiming for at this point!

How does he go if you push him a bit? Could you get him to wait just a bit longer or would that lead to a meltdown? Will and Dash used to have their first nap at 9am, and when we went to one nap, we changed things up to an 11.30am lunch and 12pm nap, which works pretty well for them.

We also had to change their bedtime schedule a bit so dinner is at 6pm and they start their bath at 6.30pm - this way they're in bed (vs just starting to get ready for bed) at 7pm. They usually only nap in the afternoon for around 2 hours though - if it was longer like Libby, they'd probably still have a later bedtime.

Married2MrWright

5 hours of awake time sounds about right. I bet that once he's fully transitioned to just one nap he make wake later in the mornings!

For now, if he wakes at 6 a.m. give him lunch around 10:30 a.m. and then get him down for a nap at 11 a.m. Over the coming weeks, depending upon how he does, see if you can get him waking a bit later and then lunch at 11 or 11:30 and nap at 11:30/12.

When Libby napped 2-3x day as a baby the LONGEST they'd go is 1 hour so when we dropped to 1x day and she slept 2-3 hours, it was AWESOME! Even now, she'll only go for three hours if she's had a very early morning or very active day (i.e. lots of time outside running around)!

inamra

I think I'm way late to this post, but did you end up fully transitioning to one nap? I remember B started doing one nap pretty early (before he turned 1) since he always hated naps so much, but his schedule is also pretty different from E's (time-wise). B is more of a later sleeper, later riser (like me =P). He'd wake up at 7am to nurse, then sleep in with me until 10am, then go down for his nap after lunch sometime, around 1pm and nap for 1-2hrs. When he'd do only 1hr, I'd try to get him to nap again but he'll refuse unless I nap with him and we'll occassionally do that for an hr before dinners (which is at 6:30pm). Then after dinner we do bath/bedtime routine and he's asleep by 8:30-9pm.

Now that he's older he definitely never does the pre-dinner nap. After we weaned b/c I was pg again, he stopped sleeping in, so he wakes up around 8:30am now for whole milk in the morning, naps after lunch around 2pm and will go anywhere from 1.5hrs-3hrs, then won't sleep again until bedtime, which is around the same time still but maybe a bit closer to 9pm nowadays.

We get the pooping issue a lot too with B! He knows that if he poops, we'll come in and get him, so he will try to grunt and push when we put him down for a nap! It really cuts his naps short =( We never really were able to work around it much except maybe more fruit at dinner (so he gets his pooping over with in the morning) but it's still kind of unpredictable...

Well, hope the transition went/is going well!