OH yes!!! Or should I say for you, OH no!!
I always thought and wondered about that too as a fellow 45 min (40 min in our case)
napper. DS was always a good night sleeper though so at least that was good. We had early wakings with the 2-1 transition though due to overtired as like you he was only doing 1.5 hour nap where as before with 2 naps he was doing a total of 2 -2 1/2. We started the transion at 15 months BTW. I tweaked and I tweaked, in the end I think some of these things did work, but really I feel time is what solved it!
(It also didn't help having Sep Anx and teething thrown in there as well during this transition!
)
What we did:
I did do W2S, it worked for us with the 40 min nap problem, so what the heck. I did it at 1hr and 5 mins (please don't make me explain how I came up with this time
) it worked a few times but not always.
I made sure he had a good lunch.
I put him to nap at 5hours from waking or 4.5 on really overtired days.
We put him to bed at night early (no longer than 4.5 hours wake time from nap) as he was not tacking the lost sleep in the day onto his night and waking early, so I felt he at least could get the extra time at the beginning of the sleep. KWIM?
On a horrible overtired cycle, I would give him a very short 10-15 min cat nap in the car or buggy in the a.m to tie him over to the real nap.
Like I said, after around 2 almost 3 :'(months it seem to just click....it was awful for us and I said to DH it was harder than the newborn phase for us and he agreed, we were beat and felt beaten at the time adn wanted our happy DS back!
(((((((((((HUGS))))))))) to you!
Aisling x
PS. I just re-read my post and I sound awfully dramatic, sorry!
)