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Dropping the 3rd nap

littlebean510littlebean510 member
in Babies: 6 - 9 Months
Hi,
If your LO has dropped from 3 naps to 2, what age did this happen, and how did you know it was time?  My 6.5 month old is a cat-napper, never sleeps longer than 40 min and currently takes 3 naps.  Her awake time is stretching, so it's been tough to fit in those 3 naps during the day without the 3rd one getting too close and interfering with bedtime.  I think it might be too early but she is resisting that 3rd nap so I am contemplating dropping it and rearranging her naps to see if it will help her consolidate and lengthen them.

Here is what our schedule looks like now:
7 am wake up
9ish - nap (30-40 min)
11:30ish - nap (30-40 min)
3:30ish - nap (30 min)
7 pm bedtime

I am scared to stretch her first awake time longer than 2 hours at the risk of making her overtired.  Has anyone else experienced this or have any advice or suggestions?  TIA!
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Re: Dropping the 3rd nap

  • honeydew01honeydew01 member
    We're going through it now. DD is 8 months and a week and she dropped it just before she turned 8 months old. I have read that dropping the 3rd nap could happen anytime between 6 to 9 months. I know she was dropping it because she resisted the 3rd nap for MORE than a week straight (more like 10 days). She resisted it for a couple of days when she was 6-7 months but ended up going back to taking it so I knew she was not ready to drop it yet

    When she dropped her 3rd nap, her awake time increased by half an hour. I don't put her down on a set schedule (ex. some people put their kid down at 9 and 1 pm everyday), we go by her sleep cues which happen to be a good indicator of when she is tired. 

    So she wakes up anywhere from 6:30 to 8 am, she is tired for the first nap after 2 hours (used to be 1.5 hours when she took 3 naps and 1 hour when she took 4 naps). She naps an hour to hour and half. Then she goes down for her second nap 2.5 hours from the time she wakes up from the first nap. Then she's up 3 to 3.5 hours until bedtime. 

    On days she wakes up closer to 8 am the 2 nap schedule works great. On days she wakes up earlier and doesn't take long naps we are done with naps at 2:30 or 3 and she's overtired by bedtime. She's still transitioning though so with time I expect her to adjust. I am putting her to bed for the night earlier than usual (sometimes as early as 6 pm) until she fully adjust to the new nap schedule. I am hoping that once her nap lengthen and she adjust we could go back to the 7/7:30 bedtime.
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  • maritimememaritimeme member
    Pretty much the same as PP. DD will be 8 months next week. She was doing catnaps too exact same as yours and we were also having trouble fitting in the third nap some days.

    In order to get there we went to scheduled naps for a couple of weeks. 9 and 1. Unless she was up before 6:30 then her first nap was earlier. Now we are more flexible. We'd only offer two naps, then bed 3.5hrs after the second nap. Some days it was a 5:30 bedtime! Since we started two weeks ago she is doing at least one hour naps sometimes two! We had to leave her 1 hour in her crib which gave her the chance to put herself back to sleep when she woke. It took her about two days to start sleeping longer! It was taking her 30 mins to go back to sleep in the early days but now she barely wakes up after that first sleep cycle.

    The only time we offer a third nap around 330 is if bed will fall before 530 but we only had to do that the first week once or twice. Sometimes we've even been able to have the second nap at 2pm with a 7-7:30 bedtime.

    DD #1: March 20, 2013
    DD # 2: May 2, 2015
    EDD #3: March 4, 2018



                                              

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  • littlebean510littlebean510 member
    Thanks, ladies.  Lately she's barely been giving me 30 min at each nap which only adds up to 1.5 hours of day time sleep.  Even if I could only get 2 45 min naps, I'd be happy and it would be the same amount of sleep.  It would be less time I spend a) trying to get her to nap and b) worrying about naps.

    We too to by sleep cues and not the clock.  Most of the time she goes 2 hours after her initial morning wake up.  Then after that, she hasn't seemed sleepy even after 2.5 hours from the wake up of that nap.  She has just been super alert this week and it's been more and more difficult to get her down for naps.  I spend almost as much time getting her to nap as how long she sleeps.  Today I got 20 min, 25 min and 30 min.  Oye! 

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  • VPGIRL06VPGIRL06 member
    Our sleep schedule has been 9 and 2 since 5 months for 2 naps. Sometimes they are 45 minutes, usually it's 1 short and 1 long. Her sleep cycle is a little longer, so we at least get a hour in the morning, and then 1-2 hours in the afternoon. 

    Right now our schedule is
    6/6:30-wake up
    9:930-nap
    1000/1030--wake up
    1:30/2-nap
    3/4-wake up
    7/730 nap


    BabyFetus Ticker Little Riley-our first little girl coming March 1st, 2013 (or sometime around there;)
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