When 2 to 1 naps and early starts...

[marie11]

Hi
My LO is 14mths old.  I have a couple of things I would like to ask about.
Firstly how do you know its time to go from one to two sleeps??
And secondly - will this help early waking??

She has always been an early waker, never later than 6.45/7am tops...but we settled into 6.15/6.30am wakes which were fine.  Over the past couple of months this has eeked back to 5.30am. 
So by 9am she is ready for nap number one and has anywhere from 1hr to 1.5hrs and then the same again after lunch. 
We have had a couple of days where she has woken later at 6.45am and so only needed one sleep. 
I wondered if I started trying to amuse her more to keep her up later than 9am for her first nap and get her into a one nap day if this would then help the early starts??

Thank you for your help!!

[debo620]

Hi, I have definately been there with the early wakes.
The long am nap can reinforce the early wake, so you could start by cutting that back a bit
so being that she is waking early, try:

she wakes at 5:30---but leave her in her crib til desired time of 6:30 with resettlling if necessary
nap 1 9 for 30 or 40min at the most and you wake her
nap 2 1-2:30
bed 6:30/6:45

HTH
I think you have deal with te ealry wake before moving to 1 nap completely. many at this age are on a 30min am ap and longer pm.

[marie11]

Thank you Debo, I will give that a go.
Today she has struggled to go off for her PM nap - as she has a few times lately, so that shorter am nap may help out that too.  Thanks again and will let you know how it goes!

[samijoe]

Sounds like a great plan ladies!   


sami