amount of nap question?

[keeps me guessing]

My DD will be 15 months in a week and a half and we have been having sleep issues on and off. WE introduced a night light and she was sleeping fine again, now we have had EW for the past 4 days (4:45-5:30) and will scream the house down until i take her out of the room. I think she is transitioning to one nap.Even though she was up at 5:30 she was fine to stay awake until 9:30am which is her usual time. (she use to get up around 6:30-7am, closer to 7am)

My question is that she presently sleeps 2.5 hours a day (30 mins in am and 2 hours in pm). is sleeping 2.5-3 hours on one nap different? I have put her down for 1 nap on a couple of occasions and she sleeps 2.5 to 3 hours is this too much even if its just the one nap? I hope this makes sense.

[lyndsy_p]

Darlene, I am not "there" yet, but I think I have the answer to your question. I do think the amount of sleep in 2 naps is different than that of one nap. They can get by with less overall sleep when they are on 2 because each nap refreshes them and it's like pressing the reset button. With 1 nap it has to be longer, not only for the total sleep amount, but for the A time before bed too. So I would say a longer single nap should be okay.

HTH
Lyndsy

[Layla]

Once she is on 1 nap if she's sleeping 2.5-3hrs you might find that she won't sleep as much at night; So if you're happy with a 10-10.5hfr night and a longer nap then its ok  . If she's sleeping 2.5-3hrs during the day and still is able to do a long night, then even better for you

[keeps me guessing]

I don;t really want 10 hours at night but i am quite happy with 11-11.5 is better. We use to do 7:00am w/u and 7:30pm bedtime.

I think i understand now that even though she may sleep 2.5 hours on one nap she may indeed be more tired then 2.5 on 2 naps because she is getting refreshed each time. I guess i just have to see what happens but defenitly difficult to start when she is waking at 5-5:30am.

Thank you

[Layla]

Maybe start with shortening her pm nap down to 1.5hrs so that she starts waking up a little later

[keeps me guessing]

good suggestion, so it is better to keep with 2 naps even if the total amount is shorther then 1 longer nap?

[Layla]

Not sure how to answer that . She's probably pretty close to going down to 1 nap anyway... maybe try 1 nap for about a week to see how she'll do and if you see pattern of her nap getting shorter (like less than 1.5hrs) or her getting overtired then go back to 2. At that age we were doing 30mins am & 1.5hrs pm with a longer night & not too long after that we were doing  1 nap with a catch up 2 nap day every 3rd or 4th day...