1 Year Old and Naps/Sleeping Changes?

[sisenb]

I have a happy nearly one year old boy who has been experiencing some changes to his sleep schedule and I am not sure what to do.

His schedule for some time has been:

6:30 to 7:00 AM Wake up and play
7:15 AM Bottle
8:15 AM Breakfast
9:00-9:30AM Nap for 45 minutes
11:30 Lunch
1:30 Naps for 1.5 to 2.5 hours
3:30/4:00 Bottle
6:00 Dinner
7:00 Bottle
7:30 Sleep (almost always sleeps through the night with no problems)

Lately, I have found the following:

Morning Nap--he seems really tired and it is tough to wake him.  I know I should be getting rid of this nap soon but he seems to need it.  I recently cut it back to 45 minutes in the hopes of eventually going to one nap.

Afternoon Nap--this nap seems to be getting shorter and twice in the past week he either didn't sleep at all or slept about 20 minutes.  He played on his own in his crib for the usual minimum naptime but just wasn't sleeping.

Evening--no issues here except for when his naps are short during the day, he may go to bed a bit earlier.  The big change here is that he is sleeping later.  He used to get up between 6:30 and 7:00 and now I have had to wake him at 7:30.

My questions are:

1. What is going on?
2. Should I be getting rid of his morning nap?
3. What should I do about the afternoon nap?  He seems to still need it given how tired he gets without it.

I feel like he is trying to tell me something with these changes but I am just not getting it.  Can anyone share their experience and perhaps some reassurance?

Thank you!

[stuckingermany]

I am right there with you. My little boy turned one last week. He is sleeping for 1 1/2 hours in the morning, however his afternoon nap is short or he just plays two days our of the week. Missing the afternoon nap would not be so bad, except that he is totally wiped out at 7:00pm and I thought we would be dropping the morning nap soon? (He also sleeps well at night 7:30pm to 7:00am.) I am interested to see what people have to say.
Good Luck!

[Mom to M&M]

Sounds like you are in a similar boat to us. I'd suggest you start pushing out the morning nap - I'd delay the first nap until 10 for now - if you do that will he take a long nap? I'm currently doing this with my DD - she really needs/loves her morning nap but if I let her sleep too long she refused PM nap. I've tried waking her early from morning nap but then she's just a royal crank all afternoon - so the new plan is to delay morning nap as much as possible without her getting too overtired, let her sleep as long as she can, and then early bedtime. We usually can get her to 10:30-11 and get a 2 hour nap and then bedtime 6:45-7... We plan to try to keep pushing out the morning nap until it's starting at 12 (and eventually 12:30). So maybe in your case, this week delay first nap until 10 and see what that gets you and if that seems to help next week try 10:15 and then 10:30 and so on?

Also, if you let him take a good morning nap will he take a catnap in the afternoon if needed in his stroller or the car?

[sisenb]

Thank you both for your responses.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to introduce any changes because my son became sick last week and is still struggling to get better.  Hopefully, by later this week, he will be feeling better and we can try to make some of the changes you suggested.

[KellyC]

I hope this won't confuse you but I wanted to give you a different idea which worked for us as  I see you're already doing a shortened morning nap and a long nap after lunch which is what we did.

If your DS is still happy to go to sleep at 9/9.30 then I suspect it might be too soon to move to one nap just yet.  I would put him down at 9.30 for no longer than 30 minutes then do his next nap at 12.30/1pm and see how that suits him. 

I hear what you're saying about him being in a deep sleep when you wake him as this was always the case with Zander because between 20 and 40 minutes is his deep phase of sleep but once I woke him he was always happy for the rest of the morning.  I saw the morning nap as just getting enough sleep to get through until the 'main' nap after lunch and by keeping the main nap a long 2 hour sleep after lunch I think the transition to one nap has been easier as I haven't had to teach him to extend to 2 hours and he already knows that he goes from lunch straight to bed. 

Once he stopped going to sleep at 9.30 and settling again at 12.30/1 we changed the morning nap to 20 minutes at 9.40-10.

HTH
Kelly x