11.5 month old suddenly taking ages to go down for PM nap

[Harrysmum2015]

Hi everyone

I really hope someone can help. My son is 11.5 months old and is a very happy and contended baby but our routine has gone a bit awry of late and needs tweaking I think. We've mostly always followed Tracy's methods and as a result H is a very independent sleeper and doesn't need me at all in the night and tends mostly to take naps which are between 70 mins to 2 hours. However, over the past 2 months H has been waking earlier and earlier in the morning (he's always been an early riser - 6am ish - which we are content with as so are we but he has been waking between 5 and 5.30am.

Our routine is as follows:

Wake between 5 - 5.30am (leave in cot until 6.15am)
6.15am - bottle 9oz
8am - Breakfast porridge etc
8.30/8.45am until max 10:20am - AM nap (I wake him by 10:20am ish if he hasn't woken before)
10:30/11am - Snack
12:30pm - lunch
1.30/2pm - 3.45pm max - PM nap (this is the nap which varies the most as sometimes he will go straight to sleep by 1.30/1.45pm and sometimes will play in his cot until close to 2.30pm on bad days - on the bad days this often means me waking him by 3:45pm so as not to interfere with bedtime)
5:30pm - dinner
Bath etc
6:30pm - bottle 7oz and bed - usually asleep by between 6:30pm and 7pm.

I'm sure the early waking is a result of his schedule but I can't work out what it might be. 
For some reason he needs around 4 hours of awake time between his naps in the middle of the day - also I can't work out whether his playing in the cot means he is OT or UT (either way he does a long nap over 70 mins). I don't know whether he is getting the right amount of awake time before bedtime either.

Sorry - lots of questions! I'd really appreciate some advice. xx

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

I think he is headed into one nap territory! Have a read of this: From 2 to 1 nap transition (10-12m and older)

If he can handle a 4 hr A time between naps then he is probably very close to being able to handle one nap...we did the switch when we hit about 4.5 hrs A time. But I am one who does things cold turkey so you may want to take a more gradual approach

[Harrysmum2015]

Thanks! I was wondering if the 2-1 change that might be behind it. My worry is whether cutting his AM nap down will actually make things worse and whether his EW is a result of OT. However, I guess if it was a result of OT then this suddenly wouldn't have manifested itself over the past month or so (after quite a few months of 2 decent naps fitting nicely into the day) - it must be a result of him heading to 12 months old as you say. So difficult!

Another concern that might be contributing to it is the fact that he might have asthma and is coughing a lot at night and early morning (I have a doc appointment to confirm in the next few days). I don't know if anyone has had experience of this and whether this affected their LO's sleep.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

My older kids have asthma but it did not affect them so young. My middle DD did have apnea so slept a lot but had low quality sleep, so it is totally possible. You could also keep the morning nap the longer nap and turn the pm nap into a catnap (but also push the morning nap out).