If you have a bad nap day do you lessen awake times?

[mom2william]

I was just wondering b/c my DS (9 1/2 months) still sometimes has 30 or 40 minute naps.  If he has one for his AM nap, then do you lessen the awake time 'til the next nap??  If I keep him up until our next typical naptime then he's waaaay overtired by that time.  Just wondering what others do when this happens. 

Thanks for any advice!

Suzanne
___________

William born 3/23/05

[Taylor's Mommy]

If it is 30 minutes than I try to cut the next A time short by about 15-30 minutes max.  But if it is 45-1 hour then I stick with the same A time.  For the last 3-4 weeks I have noticed that overall, Taylor does better with set nap times that vary no more than 30 minutes, regardless of awake times.

HTH!

[Meg's Mom]

At this age we too had set naps time, w/in 30min as Taylor's mommy said.

Hope that helps.

[Taylor's Mommy]

Hi Suzanne,

I would have his pm nap be about 3 hours (or whatever his ideal afternoon awake time should be) from the time he wakes up from nap #1.

One tip that you might want to consider, now that Taylor is older and needing less day sleep, we have been limiting her morning nap to no more than 1.5 hours (and don't let her sleep past 11:15).  This way nap #2 always falls between 2:15-2:45ish (with 2:30 being the average).  By limiting her am nap, it pretty much always ensures a good pm nap of at least 1hour 15 minutes-1 hour 45 minutes so that she can make it through to bedtime.

HTH!