How deal w/ OT when going through the 2-1 nap switch? 13 month old...

[catonss]

HI!
My 13 month old has been in a sleep funk this week.  Typical of her age - sleeping a good am nap, but nothing at the pm, and then really grumpy by bedtime, falling asleep while i nurse her...awake some in the the night, etc.  She has struggled w/ this OT thing on and off the past few months (ok, her whole life really), from what i read it's so typical of this age as they get ready to consolidate naps...but i've also been pretty sure it has something to do w/ her pooping.     If she goes in the morning, she has a good afternoon nap, if she doesn't go, then she lays awake in the afternoon, sometimes pooping, sometimes not, then we deal w/ strained poops the next day.  So now that she's in the age where naps are iffy on their own, it's been hard for me to figure out what to do.  If it's just poop related and OT b/c she's lost sleep the last several days, then i need to just try to help her catch up on sleep (realizing the poop issue is a whole other story)...  If it's due to the nap shift, then i need to move ahead somehow with that.

Anyway, i don't feel like i can determine that she's ready to make the 1 nap shift until i get her caught up on sleep.  I've been waking her up from her am nap after an hour (yesterday i tried after 45 mins to see if that would help), and still no pm nap.  I'm wondering if i should just let her sleep as long as she wants today at the am nap and see if that helps her catch up on sleep. If it's too long of a nap to not get a good afternoon nap...well, she hasn't taken one the last 5 days anyway, so no loss there -but maybe she got some more sleep in the long run!!  I haven't been putting her to bed at night a ton earlier (maybe a half hour) - that used to get us in more trouble (early waking in the morning), but maybe i need to try that too.

Until this started, her routine was:
7 - wake (2.5 hrs awake - would it help the overall picture to extend this?)
9:30 - 10:30 - am nap (i ALWAYS end up waking her here, even if she's had good afternoon naps)
10:30-1:30 - 3 hrs wake time (should i make this earlier if i'm cutting the am nap, and if she's OT?)
1:30-3 - pm nap
7 - pm sleep (so this A time is 4 hrs - should i try to make her awake times more even, could that be the problem now??)

Thanks for any help!!
Sarah

[skatty]

Hi Sarah, cutting the AM nap short never worked for us so when we first transitioned at 12 months I started pushing the AM nap later and let DD sleep as long as she wanted and then she would catnap in the pushchair on a walk after about 4hrs A time, I'd wake her at 20 mins which gave just enough time to feed her and the bath and bed routine. This lasted a few weeks and then when her A times got a bit longer I started putting her to bed really early, after 4½ hours A time max so as early as 5pm (and even 4.30 on occasions!) but we had a very smooth transition and avoided OT completely 

Good luck, it can be a very stressful time but the 2-1 transition thread is really handy