anyone want to chat about the 2-1 nap switch?

[Layla]

Babyre - so did she sleep 1.5hrs in the morning or did you wake her at 40mins? I am a little confused

Also the wake up I would honestly leave until things with naps are sorted out. Just me though. If she's doing 12hrs at ngiht, I am not sure you an get anymore out of her....Some babies have a natural biorhythms to wake up early. I think once she is on 1 nap the morning wake up time will settle.....

[newmaze]

I guess my problem is, and is isn't really a problem, where I get confused is, how will you ever know if your toddler can do it, unless you try and see?  For example, if I push the morning back to 10:30, which isn't late, but isn't so early... that particular day, that could have been a 3 hour napper!  So 1:30 wake time until 6:30-7 bed isn't bad.  In fact, Isabella did 1-7 the other day totally fine.  I was shocked.  So, my confusion is, how do you know what is best.  If you keep waking them out of their what they would like to be normal rhythms, how will you know what they are capable of? Or what they prefer?  I am by NO MEANS pushing this 2-1 nap thing!!  I just personally experienced it sunday randomly, so of course, it has me snooping and checking out these threads!!  I want to be prepared in case this happens again.  When she slept 10-1 on sunday, you had to see me... I went in and out of her room 3 times debating whether or not to wake her up!!!  once it got to be 12, I said, let's see where this goes! 

sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. 

jen

[newmaze]

oh, and I also want to do the right thing.  I feel like I have no idea what i am doing with this transition! 

[debo620]

Stacy, glad you are still around... don't want to get rid of you at all!

Layla, thanks for your opinion  
I would really LOVE 1 nap, just really bugs me that it goes great with great naps and then we get very early wakes which make me 2nd guess things.

but last night, after the 2 nap day, Noah slept 7:30-6am, the longest night we have had all week!

so today was (with my husband watching Noah):
wake 6, out of crib 6:45
nap 10 for 15min
nap tried at 1pm, finally asleep by 1:45-3:10pm
bed 7:20ish
asleep by 7:50 or so.

so 'll see what time he wakes and go from there....

[babyre33]

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  She did a 1.5 hr nap for #1, and I had to wake her at 40 min from #2 to get her to bed on time.  That should make more sense now.  ANd I"m not trying to get more than 12 hrs sleep.  I want to shift it from 6:30-6:30am to like 7pm-7am.  Trust me, I'm THRILLED with 12 hr nights when we get them.

I'm hoping the long first nap will work well.  It has been so far, even though I wasn't my plan at first.  If she doesn't take a good first nap we end up with a second nap being longer...so far so good.  The only time we don't do well with nap #1 is if I put her down too early.  She only has 3.5 hrs A time right now before the first nap, but I think she could handle more.  She doesn't show any tired signs before this first nap, I just put her down bcause "it's time".  We'll see in a few days if she can do more.

[M and N's Mom]

I have another question for you Moms who are further into this than I am. 

We have been at:
2.75h A
40 min nap
2.5h A
1.5h-2h+ nap
3.5h A
bed

But, he is taking longer to fall asleep in the afternoon, and waking earlier and earlier in the morning so I'm going on the assumption that I need to shorten the am nap now.  So, if I go to 30 mins how to I do the A times?  Do I leave them the same at 2.75h, 2.5h, and 3.5h or do I somehow adjust them as I go to a shorter nap? That 10 minutes needs to go somewhere in the day...before the nap so 3h A before the am nap?  How does this work?

Thanks.

P.S.  If you're thinking, this is her second child, she should know how to do this, my DD was one of the kids that I was able to push her to one nap over about 2 weeks and she would have a 3h pm nap so this is all new to me, LOL!

[debo620]

Hi M and N's mom!!!

I do think you should cut the am to 30min and push the morning A time to 3hrs,
and then leave the next nap at 2.5hr A time after a 30min nap.
That sounds about right,

[KathrynK]

If he goes down easily for the am nap at the moment I would keep that nap at the same time, and add that 10 mins on to the middle A time.  Then he should go down fine for the pm nap as he will be less rested from the morning nap and has had a little longer A time.
When Sophie went through periods of waking early I always had to cut back on total sleep- pm nap too- for a few days to get her back on track, you know, what Tracy said in the book about robbing Peter to pay Paul. Try just shortening the am nap first, hopefully that will do the trick. But if after a week or so he is still waking early then you could perhaps cut that pm nap back to 1hr30max for a couple of days to see if he will then add the extra to his night sleep, that's what Sophie used to do. hope this helps xx

ps Just noticed Deb has posted and we have suggested different things! I guess you just have to try them and see which works best for your lo... I wish there was a magic solution, sigh...

[newmaze]

you would be a billionaire several times over, lol!!!

[Carmela's Mom]

My son is crying for a good 10 minutes when I put him in his crib for the am nap.  I can't figure out why.  I've put him in early and I've put him in late.  I've tried every A time in the morning and he still just cries   I thought I had figured out that he was crying because he wasn't *that* tired, but now I'm thinking I'm wrong because he cried today and was showing "sleepy" signs.  I'm so confused.  This is our day:

6:30-7:00 am awake
10:15 am in for nap crying
10:30-11 nap (I wake him)
1:15-3:15 nap
7:30ish bedtime (sometimes earlier if he wake early from nap)

Any suggestions why he cries in the morning nap???

[newmaze]

I don't know if this is a suggestion or a question - sort of goes along with my first posts about what to do, how to do this technique - why is it that his first A time is almost 4 hours, but then he can go down for a nap 2 hours later?  Is it because he is so tired waking from his nap?  See, I would have thought if we wake them after 30-40 mins, you still put down around 2ish?  I am now more confused than I was before about this transition!! LOL!

Maybe he is crying because he was overtired, but you said you have tried all sorts of A times.  I know if my daughter woke at 6:30, she would be exhausted (showing signs or not) by 9:30, for sure!

[Carmela's Mom]

Yes because i wake him from his morning nap, he wakes tired so I put him down quickly.  I kind of use the first nap as a "crutch" to get to a decent early afternoon nap because my daughter naps at 12:30. 

[aisling]

Hi all, just wanted to report that after 3 looooooooooong months my DS has settled well into his 1 nap. (19 months old)  Not trying to discourage you, but to let you know we went through everything and experimented with everything you are all doing and I honestly think no matter what I would try, my child would take 3 months to go through this.    If your child goes through it faster, fantastic, so happy for you if they are like mine, I feel for you a lot (((HUGS))). 

The last month was very discouraging and I thought, my child just can't do it and I suck, it was very demoralizing.  After 2 months of tweak here, tweak there, sometimes very short a.m nap, early wakings, etc...I just decided to go with a nap at some point between 12:30 and 1pm no later.  However long he sleeps... whatever and get him into bed at night no later than 5.5 hours from wake up from nap.  So a month of this, no guessing or fixing and FINALLY...we are there.  6:30-7am wake up  12:30-1:00 nap of 1hr 30, sometimes 1 hour 40 or somedays 2 hours (not many) and bedtime 5.5 hours from wake up.  Now of course we are dealing with the 2nd year molars and off the the UK for 10 days so who knows what will happen.  Just thought I would share, HTH....  

Aisling x

[Carmela's Mom]

Thanks aisling.  I remember with my daughter we had gone on a vacation shortly after she transitioned to one nap.  Well on vacation we were forced to bring back 2 naps as she was way too stimulated during the day and got tired easily.  We liked the two naps because she stayed up a bit longer in the pm as well though so we went with it.  So if your going to be busy, you may want to consider two.  When we came home, we had a tough time for 2 weeks, but she was back on one nap again.

[becky1969]

Yay Aisling! Glad you are a successful graduate!! And it's good to let other moms know that it might not happen until 19 months - Owen did it at 16 months, but I kept thinking that it should have happened by 14-15 for some reason, so like you, I felt like we must be doing it wrong. 

I was just thinking in the shower this morning that we had 3 hard months too (12-15 months), 1 month of adjustment (15-16) where his nap was longer, but not consistent, and then the last month (16-17) has been bliss! 2-2.5 hours consistently, and only 1-2 NWs per week. Woo hoo! We're getting eye teeth over here, so I've had 3 nights of Owen being awake for 1.5-2 hours in the middle of the night.  But you know what? I'm just THRILLED that I know it's not from the stupid nap transition! I almost WELCOME teething NWs! At least I know what the hell to do! (nothing - just meds - no need to adjust stupid routine!). 

This was the most challenging period by far. But, the rewards are GREAT! Having just 1 nap is so liberating. Hang in there, everyone!