Start of 18 month sleep regression or time to switch to 1 nap?

[mads2014]

So the last time I posted on here my 16 month old DD's sleep was a mess. In the end I did some gradual withdrawal sleep training and also went back to 2 naps every single day capping the first one at 30 minutes.

I held onto those 2 naps as long as poss as per the advice on here and things were going better than ever before, she started to wake up later than ever at 7/7.30, no nap resistance, no bedtime resistance and sleeping through the night.

DD is now 2 weeks short of turning 18 months, and in the last few days things have started to go a little wonky and I was wondering what approach I should take from those who have been there before.

My schedule before was:

WU 7/7.30
Nap 1: 10.30 (30 mins capped)
Nap 2: 2.30 (uncapped)
BT 7.30

However the last few days she has been refusing the afternoon nap. 3 days on the trot now I have tried for over an hour.

So ladies where should I go from here? If I go to 1 nap what time should I make it and how many hours after that nap until bedtime? I'm aware as she is nearly 18 months I might be able to push her hard I'm just scared of it all going wrong?! 

[trimbler]

You can go to a 20min morning nap and see if that helps her settle? We went down to 20mins for some time, and then a few weeks of morning nap refusal/10min naps before (I think!) finally dropping to one nap - ie we've stopped offering the morning nap at all as of this week, so all very recent! Also just to warn you, 18mo is a classic sleep regression, we've certainly seen this in our DD, she's been having more troubles settling, especially with travelling over Christmas, but on one nap now she crashes more readily!

So, personally, I 'd start by trying a 20min morning nap, if she still refuses a pm nap 3-3.5h after that then you could try 10mins. If that's a non starter, then you could try some one nap days, it's possible that she'll still need some two nap days to catch up though. How long was she napping in the afternoon when she did take that nap? That will give us some idea of what her overall sleep needs are in 24h, which will help in figuring out a one nap routine. But if she can get that pm nap back again with a shorter am nap, that will start to bring the pm nap earlier and longer and hopefully then when she does move to one nap, it will feel like a smaller change to the routine overall, if that makes sense?

[First mum]

Agree with Trimbler, I'd shorten the morning nap and see what happens.  From memory we went from 1hour to 30 mins and then it went pear shaped.  Following advice from here we reduced it to 15 mins and managed to hold here for another couple of months which was long enough to get the main nap where we wanted it and my lo could handle the longer awake time.

We did do days with and without the catnap when she was building up to it, but then we got busy and it just wasn't needed anymore.

Good luck!