2 naps to 1 - how do i know when??

[lulah'smum]

My DD is 12.5 months. She's been on 2 naps since she was about 7 months. Lately her naps have become very short and I'm wondering if we should cut down to 1??

Her morning nap (10am) lasts about 40-50 mins and in the afternoon (3pm) she's only down for 20-30 mins. She seems happy enough when she wakes most days. She does get grumpy after about an hour. For the past week her bedtime is around 7pm (at which time she's reeeeally tired) and she wakes around 6.30am.

I'm happy to put her down after lunch (it will be a struggle to keep her happy though) but she seems to get sooooo tired in the morning - even after only being awake for 2 hours! We hold out for a while and then she gets her second wind - I think this is quite a common thing?

What do you think I should do?

[jessica and emilys mummy]

You could try the after lunch nap,although I still find Emily is so tired in the morning but she won't sleep in the morning,thanks to that 'second wind'.However because she's so tired by the time she has her nap (around 12.30pm) she doesn't want lunch.I have to take dd#1 to school at 12.10pm and so she has lunch at 11.30am.I do find I'm having to Emily a sandwich and yoghurt about 11am and then when she wakes up between 2-2.30pm she has more,before I rush her off to collect Jess from school.
From other posts I've read recently it could be that they get hungry about 10ish which is why they get that really horrible tiredness :wink:

Sorry,I've gone off subject here. :oops:
I would try for the later nap though,or if she's happy with the naps that she has (meaning if she's not waking up grumpy after each nap) then you could leave them for a while.

[sacmommy]

My thoughts are: 1) her naps are very short and 2) it's a bit early to go to 1 nap for most kids (with the caveat that both my kids were solidly on 1 nap by 13 or 14 months!!) Perhaps she's overtired for both naps? The 4+ hours between the 2 naps seems like a long time to be awake (of course if you move to 1 nap she will have to put up with longer wake times).

If you do decide to try to go to 1 nap now, keep a few things in mind. It takes a few weeks to get the 2 naps on solid ground. So you may have short naps and a grumpy child during that time. After about 2 weeks, my dd went to those nice long 2+ hr naps - but I was a little stressed about it when she was taking 1 nap for 1 hr before that! Secondly, don't worry too much about timing lunch. Feed her when she's hungry, and nap her when she's tired - probably no later than 11 or 11:30 at this point.

[Jane D]

Hi, my ds is 15 months and has only just gone to one nap.  My advise would be not to move to fast.  I, like you, wasn't sure if I should be helping him make the adjustment, however I decided to let him adjust himself and currently he is going for one good long nap in the morning.

He's up by 6:30am and is knackered by 9:30am so generally is asleep by 10am for two hours or sometimes more. 

I make sure that a little while after his breakfast he gets a snack of fruit or biscuits to keep him going till he wakes up for his lunch.

He is then pretty happy for the rest of the day until bedtime at 7pm.  Sometimes a bit grumpy around 3pm but perks up after dinner at 4pm.

I found that he was becoming more resistant to taking the second nap so one day I just decided to not force it and see how he coped without it and we have been doing that most days for the last week or so.

[lulah'smum]

Thank you so much for your responses. I'll try and ride this one out for a while I think. It does seem too early to be putting her on 1 nap. She might start having longer naps again soon I hope. Failing that, we'll just have to persist with the 2 short ones for as long as we can. Yesterday was terrible - 30mins and then 20mins! By 5.30pm she was an absolute wreck. I kept her up until her usual bedtime but in hindsight an earlier bedtime might help!!