Ideal Nap Time?

[Jodieplus2]

Weird question I know- but is there an ideal nap time to work towards for just 1 nap?

My lo has been on 1 nap for about 6 weeks i guess (he is now 14months old), and I have slowly been moving his nap forward (still having early bed time), our routine is now as follows:

Wake- 6- 6.30am (has always been this early- any ideas for later waking would be much appreciated!)
Nap- 11.30/11.45am for anywhere between 1.5 to 3 hours
Bath/ Bottle- 6/6.15pm
Bed- 6.30pm

i just wanted to know when to stop trying to move his nap forward & eventually get bed back to 7pm.

Thanks
Jxx

[elmarie]

i am in the same situation.  My lo has made the swithch about 2 months ago and our routine is

6ish-wake
11.oo nap
6.00-asleep

I still haven't manage to push the nap later as she is so tired by 11.  From other postings I have figured out that it can take a few weeks before that can happen.  i think we just need to be patient and flexible...

[imsmum]

I think around that age Tracy gave an "ideal" schedule of wake at 7, nap at 1 until 3, bedtime 7:30, sleep at 8.  Having said that, you see a lot of variability in the posting here about nap time, but it seems that 5.5 to 6.5 hours after wakeup is the most common range for that age.  you may find as you slowly push the nap back your lo will start to sleep in a bit later and go down later too. 

[Zoey]

I think the "ideal" time is whatever works for your LO

Owen is 20m - we tired to switch from one to two SO many times and kept having to revert back to 10m and the AM and long nap in the PM.  Finally I realized I need to do things slightly different.  I realized he could be awake for approx 5h before he needed to have a nap - anymore tham 5h and he was overtired and the nap stunk.  So regardless of what time he woke up, 5h from then on the dot - he was down for his nap.  Also, I realized that some days he still needed a 10-15m cat nap in the AM - so I gave it to him on the days he seemed to not be able to make it til his PM nap.  At first it was like every other day he needed the cat nap - soon though, it was every third day, then once a week and so forth til he didn't need it anymore.

Also, I didn't use early bedtimes all that much.  He went to bed early if his nap was short and that's about it. 

I still plop him in bed 5h from his wake time, regardless.  Also I limit his nap to 2h15m- any more than this and he wakes early in the AM.  So we have been on one nap smoothly for about 31 days now - it took a while to get here but being patient and flexible were how we got here.

We do:
645am wake
1145pm - 2pm nap
730pm bedtime

Anyhow that's my story!  Hope that helps some, hang in there! 

Zoey

[Layla]

Jasmine has been on 1 nap for about a week now & we started with 11am nap & over the last few days I've managed to push her to 11.30 (she wakes anywhere from 6-6.30). I am not going to push anymore until I see that her morning wake up hour is getting earlier & earlier. I am happy with that wake up time now (since her sister wakes at 6 anyways). I only pushed Bella's nap time forward when she started waking up earlier for the day (so same theory as Imsmum - later nap & bedtime with us helped with early wakings)

 

[zed]

Your routine looks good to me considering your LO's wake up time. 

Here is what my 15 months day looks like.

7:30 wake
12:00 nap
2:30 wake
5:00 dinner
6:10 bath
6:30 snack infant cereal and banana with water or milk  ( have always found this gets them to sleep longer at night than when I did liquid snack)
7:00 bed

My first son did everything the same except his nap was at 1:00.  My second would never get that far with out being OT.

I hope this helps

[Jodieplus2]

Thanks ladies,  I will stick to what we're doing at the moment then, and hopefully soon we can push a little furher forward and fingers crossed for a later morning waking!
Jxx