Just when you start feeling comfortable with your degree of nap mastery things will start getting away from you. (Sadly this basic concept sums up the entire parenting experience…) Naps that had just barely started to settle into a predictable schedule and duration will start getting shorter. Or nonexistent. Or require a huge battle.
The truth is that crap naps, like pimples on picture day, are simply a part of life. If however, your previously champion napper is having consistent nap issues then, depending on how old your baby is, the issue could be that she’s simply getting ready to drop a nap. Diagnosing if your baby is ready to drop a nap and surviving said nap dropping are challenging, primarily because the symptoms are much like every other potential nap issue. But I’ll do my best to help you figure out if, when, and how to survive the inevitable transition of baby dropping naps.
If your child is over 3 days old, you’ve probably already surmised that there are many culprits of non-existent naps including:
- You went to the grocery store and now the whole day is ruined.
- A naptime blowout required you to give baby a bath, change the bedding, and now naptime is blown.
- The paci fell out.
- Baby is teething (a ever-present condition for approximately the first 2 years of life).
- The swing batteries died.
- Baby popped out of swaddle.
- Separation anxiety.
- The dog barked.
- It’s Thursday.
But a bad nap or even a series of bad naps does not necessarily signify that baby is “done” with naps. Although it may. More on that later.
Also, this post is primarily targeting babies 6 months and older. Yes babies younger than 6 months drop naps (see below). However it’s rarely a traumatic event. In fact most parents are in favor of it because it leads to an earlier bedtime. For babies older than 6 months nap droppage is less of a party. I say this in the same way that one might say that a bad case of gout is also less of a party.
Schedule of Nap Dropping
3-6 Months
Newborn babies often take as many as 6-8 naps a day, but by ~3 months of age, your baby should have settled into a 3- or 4- nap a day schedule (and I’m using the term schedule here lightly). Babies generally drop that 4th nap and settle into your basic 3 nap schedule around this period. Usually this is a non-traumatic event. In fact it’s generally a happy occurrence as your baby simply stops easily falling to sleep for nap #4 and bedtime shifts earlier when this happens.
6-12 Months
Somewhere within this 6 month period your child will drop the 3rd nap. Half a year may be a bigger window than is helpful so let’s break it down.
If your baby is taking long chunky naps (1.5+ hours at each nap) then they may be getting sufficient daytime sleep to be done with the 3rd nap as early as 6 months. However for most people, their babies still need the 3rd nap until closer to 9 or even 12 months. So the general rule is: Long nappers drop the 3rd nap earlier. Short nappers will stick with the 3rd nap longer. As your baby gets older the 3rd nap may be a short 10 minutes or even a simple drowse while nursing. Chances are that as your child gets closer to 9-12 months in age, the 3rd nap will not be happening in the crib but will be more of an “on the go” occurrence: napping while being carried, in the car, or in the stroller. Which begs the question, “Am I supposed to be driving my child around every afternoon forever?”
No. You get a brief reprieve until they start kindergarten, at which point you’ll be driving the afternoon shuttle bus (to baseball, swim lessons, dance class, etc.) as a matter of course until they move out.
But there is often a number of weeks where baby needs but won’t easily take a 3rd nap. You can force the issue by taking a leisurely walk in the stroller or choose to skip it. Feel free to skip it if nap #2 is late or long enough that baby can comfortably make it to bedtime. However generally for babies under 9 months, skipping nap #3 leads to “baby awake too long” or “bedtime too early” problems. So on net, a brisk walk about is generally a far better choice for a few weeks.
12-18 Months
Babies drop from 2 naps to 1 nap somewhere between their first birthday and 18 months. Do some babies drop down to 1 nap prior to their first birthday? Yes, but it’s rare. If your under 1 year old is working hard to convince you that they only need 1 nap a day I would remain highly skeptical. There are other far more likely culprits (separation anxiety aka they would rather stay and play with you is the most likely) behind nap struggles you might be having prior to 1.
When your 1.5 year old is ready to drop the morning nap, the afternoon nap might need to be pushed up substantially and bedtime might need to shift up for a while. As your toddler gets into the rhythm of being a “one nap” kid, bedtime may or may not move back to it’s previous time. It’s OK to be a little flexible for a while.
18 Months – 3 Years
99% of kids are napping until at least their 3rd birthday. Sure, lots of 2 year old kids prefer not to take a nap. As they’re expressing their growing desire for independence they’ll fight you on the whole idea of naptime. Who wants to lie down in the middle of the day when there are bubbles to blow and cat food to taste?!? But if your child is under 3 years of age it’s far more likely that, while they may not want to nap, they still need to nap. Remember the cardinal rule of kids: you can’t make them eat, sleep, or poop. But you can make them go to a dark, comfortable, safe, dull place every day at the same time. What they do in there is their business. But it’s your business not to confuse their desire to not nap with not needing to nap.
3 Years – 5 Years
Most kids stop napping entirely somewhere between age 3 – 5. Some lucky parents are weaning their kids off napping just prior to kindergarten. But for most of us, “the age of napping” will end between 3-4 years. Trust me when I tell you that no matter how frustrated you may currently feel with your progress on the nap front, when they finally do fade off into the distance you will remember the halcyon days of naptime with great fondness.
Signs it’s Time to Drop a Nap
How do you know your baby is ready to drop a nap? It is challenging, especially given that there are so many potential causes of bad naps. If you’re within the general time-frame for nap droppage and you’re seeing the following signs, baby might be ready to drop that nap.
- Afternoon/evening naps are making it hard for baby to easily fall asleep at bedtime.
- Naptime becomes a battle.
- Long naps are consistently becoming short naps.
- The morning nap is fine but baby can’t fall or stay asleep for the afternoon nap.
- Baby refuses to nap no matter what.
The #1 Cause of Bad Naps
Most babies have short naps or fight napping entirely because they aren’t falling asleep on their own. If you’re wondering why naps are miserable, there is a 98% chance that this is the root cause. Unfortunately a baby who can’t fall asleep on their own will exhibit the same signs as the above mentioned “signs baby is ready to drop a nap.” Ultimately the answer is to figure out a way to get your baby to fall asleep on their own at naptime because you’ve got 3-5 more years of naps to go, so sadly, this isn’t a problem that’s just going to go away. And also it’s going to make it really hard to figure out if your baby is ready to drop a nap or is just having generalized nap problems.
Surviving The Transition Phase
Dropping naps is rarely a binary function – today they take 3 naps, tomorrow 2. Instead there is often a few weeks or even a month-long window where your baby needs a nap but adamantly refuses to take one or a previously long nap is resolutely stuck at 20 minutes. During this phrase it’s a toss up as to who will be more cranky about the whole thing: baby or you. There is no magic potion to make the nap dropping transition phase go more smoothly (if there were I would sell it and be rich as Croesus) but here are some things that may help:
- Sometimes even a short 10 minute catnap is just enough to take the edge off and make evening/bedtime more pleasant for all involved.
- Sometimes catnaps complicate matters and even a short car nap will throw off the rest of the day. (Confusing, I know.)
- When baby drops a nap, the whole sleep schedule (naps + bedtime) might need to be temporarily adjusted earlier.
- Temporarily shorten the nap that is on the way out, so your child still gets some sleep at that time but not so much as to prevent later naps from happening easily or on schedule.
- Go outside at the time when your child was previously napping. This will both help distract your fussy toddler and exposure to bright light will help produce “it’s awake time” hormones in your child’s body.
- Some older kids transition best going from “napping every day” to “napping every other day”.
- Kids who are moving out of the nap phase entirely may need to have a slightly earlier bedtime.
- Parents often report that wine is helpful. Binge-watching Season #1 of Scandal might also help.
Your child’s naps were likely hard-won and it will be even harder to see them go. My youngest is now 4 and I still pine for the good old nap days. Like most transitions in life, dropping naps is often a bit rocky. And thankfully, also temporary.
Anybody else struggling with nap stoppage? Have any words of advice for fellow strugglers?
My 18 month old recently transitioned to one nap. Not by our own doing, but because he recently moved into a classroom at his school that follows a daily routine and only allows 1 nap.He’s been napping about 1-2 hours during this scheduled nap time, which is less than the combined two naps he used to get, but they report he seems to be adjusting well. That being said, he has begun waking up in the morning much earlier than normal. He used to sleep from 6pm-5am and is now sleeping from 6pm-4:20am(and I thought 5am was bad!). We let him cry when he wakes up at 4:20am but he will not go back to bed and we obviously can’t sleep through his screams so we generally give in and zombie walk to his room around 4:45am. Anyway, my question is: should we be pushing his bedtime later? Thoughts? Suggestions? The 3 shots of espresso every morning just isn’t cutting it anymore.
No solutions, just sympathy, my 14-month-old is waking at 4am too! It’s awful awful awful! Although perhaps slightly better than the 6-8 wakes per night pre-sleep training. He screams louder and louder until I go in, keeps it up while I’m holding him, then finally I ask him what he wants, and he points at the door, saying “Ta? Ta?” He wants a feed, and then to play. I do not want to play.
Re bedtime, we found last week when we were out and his bedtime was an hour later than usual, he still woke at 4am. 🙁
PS. This is almost ALWAYS the case. Late bedtime = early wake up. My kids are older but 1X a year we blow it to go see the fireworks. Like clockwork they’re up at 6 AM and we all pay for it for the weekend 😛
I know… But it’s the first thing people say: “oooh 6pm, that’s so early. Maybe if you put him to bed later he wouldn’t wake so early”. Uh, no. Not for us, anyway.
Alison (and maybe this related to Kelly too) – I know his bedtime is already early. But as you said while he’s adjusting to the new schedule he’s getting less day sleep than he was previously. So…what about experimenting with an even earlier bedtime? Say 5:30?
I KNOW this sounds crazypants. And as you’re working you’re probably pretty chuffed to basically race him home and into bed. But I would try it for 3-5 days and see what happens. If it WORKS you stick with it for a month or so and then experiment with pushing bedtime back again. As he gets older he’ll be able to handle a later bedtime.
IF (and only if) the early bedtime experiment gets you nowhere then you might try a later bedtime. But I’m worried because his total amount of night sleep is already on the short side (10 hours vs. 11) so my fear is that if you push bedtime to 6:30/7 and he sleeps till 5 AM you’ve still got a short night issue.
Anyhoo if it were me I would start with a super early bedtime and see where that gets you.
We are in the same exact situation at 13 months. Daycare room change means now only one nap. We had a previous bedtime of 7, but now with the one nap.We are experimenting with the earlier bedtime, but it’s still been a crapshoot. I’m currently hearing all sorts of unwarranted advice about later bedtimes, and driving my mother in law batty with the notion of “early bedtime”. But I trust Alexis! Her tactics made sleep training my daughter as painless as possible. I also keep reminding myself and my husband it’s temporary!!
Aw shuck – thanks 🙂
Sorry the MIL doesn’t agree. My MIL doesn’t speak English which is generally frustrating but it also means that if she doesn’t agree with my parenting, she has no way of letting me know!
Thank you thank you thank you for this post! This is EXACTLY what I’m dealing with here and I’m going crazy! Around 6.5 months we hit the nap sweet spot, she woke at 7am, napped 9-11, then 1:30-3 or 3:30. It was like clockwork, it was awesome, I knew what to expect. Then……. Somewhere around 8.5 months it all went to pot! She has been waking earlier from the morning nap, making it hard to make it to 1:30, then only napping for 30 min, thus having to go back to the catnap. Ugh! I don’t know why, what happened, what changed, this has been going on for like 3 weeks. I dread the afternoon nap everyday. I don’t know what time to put her down, I keep changing it, it’s somewhere between 1 and 2 is all I can guess. I feel like we are going backwards. Lately, if we are out and she falls asleep for 10 min on the way home, then plays in her crib and sleeps for 30 min, it’s the only way we make it to waking up at 3pm. Today out of the blue, her napping seems to be returning to its old ways….but will it be like that tomorrow? I don’t know know if this is a sleep regression, or a nap tranisitions down to one nap. 9 months seems to early. I’m not sure what my question is, but I guess I’m just saying that yes, we are going through a questionable phase. Sigh…..
We had a similar schedule for ours. She until recently slept twice a day for about 2 hours each. Morning she would wake sometime between 6-7, first nap would start sometime between 8-9 (and end by 11am max, when we’d wake her if necessary to not wreck afternoon nap), and second nap would start sometime between 12-1. If ever she fell asleep later in the afternoon for whatever reason we’d let her sleep max until 4 or 430pm, and she’d be in bed for the night by anywhere between 530pm to 630pm max, depending on if days were messed up for naps or not. I’d say that 90% of the time this was foolproof. Being at daycare was another story. It’s been hit or miss ever since she started there 6 months ago (she’s now almost 17 months). Now we’re struggling with the 2 to 1…she on most days at daycare will do two short naps, but often lately she hasn’t slept at all for one of the two. On Saturday at home, where she normally sleeps really well on weekends, she slept two 2-hr naps. Sunday was 1 hr in the morning and ZERO for afternoon. Argh!! So frustrating to not be able to count on those naps anymore! More wine please!
Oh I don’t think this is a “nap dropping” issue at all (it would be waaaay early). I think it’s plain vanilla separation anxiety. She wants to be WITH you so as she navigates a sleep cycle instead of falling back to sleep she rouses herself because YOU ARE JUST SO AWESOME TO HANG WITH.
Yay?
If it were me I might lean towards sticking to the schedule even if it means being awake for a longer period of time. I would also experiment with not going to pick her up when she wakes after a super short nap. You don’t want naptime to become a huge cryfest but experiment with it a little – give her 10-15 minutes and see what happens. If it doesn’t work today wait a few days, try again.
So the phrases ” But you can make them go to a dark, comfortable, safe, dull place every day at the same time. What they do in there is their business.” immediately made me think of this video. Which I still remember from a year ago.
http://youtu.be/SS3dHKWVP7Y
Best.thing.ever.
LOVE that one. A classic for sure!
*SNORT*
My 23 month old has been having awful 2-4hr long night wakings a couple times a week, and people keep telling me it’s because she needs to drop her one and only nap. I have a hard time believing this, though, as it’s been going on for 4 months, and I REALLY don’t believe that a 19 month old would be ready to drop naps altogether! She doesn’t usually call for me or get upset during the night, she just lays there quietly and tosses and turns. On the few occasions that she has missed her nap, the following night is a total disaster, so I just don’t believe this could be nap related, could it?! She goes to bed at 7:30p, doesn’t fall asleep until 8:30p, then is up for the day around 7a. Only 10.5hrs at night and at best 1.5hr nap is just barely a 12 hour day, and that’s a GOOD day! On bad days she sleeps 8-9hrs at night, and still only takes an hour or so nap despite seeming exhausted after a rough night. She seems chronically tired in the mornings. Does this sound like a nap-dropping thing, or a more complicated problem all together?
I can totally relate. We’ve been having similar middle of the night awake problems with out 6mo. except he isn’t quiet when he wakes up. he talks, sings, does whatever, and eventually ends up crying. We’ll go calm him down, even get him back to sleep, until the second we put him down, then repeat the process for the next two hours of talking and singing leading to crying and rocking. I wish I had a solution for you. If you do come up with anything, please let me know, I’d love to hear any suggestions.
Hey Melinda – that sound more like a “put down awake” problem. Or maybe a “not enough soothing” issue. Check this out: http://www.troublesometots.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-i/
Hey Katy,
I’m thinking you’ve got 2 things going on, 1 is the long “awake in the middle of the night” thing. And 2 is that she’s not falling asleep AT bedtime.
Your child should be able to fall asleep relatively easily at bedtime so if she’s routinely hanging out for 1 hour, something is off. Either her nap needs to happen earlier in the day, or her bedtime needs to be 8:30. Even if she’s happy hanging out in there, 1 hour in bed isn’t ideal for anybody.
I’m not sure why the night wakings are happening. Do they happen at the same time every night? Are you sure she’s wide awake? I’m pretty stunned that a toddler will hang out awake for so long and not be upset about it. 4 hours awake in a dark room by herself? And on those nights she’s only getting ~6 hours of sleep during the day? Have you asked your pediatrician for input?
Have you seen the post below on 12 hour nights? It might give you some perspective on duration of night sleep?
We are currently experimenting with a slightly later bedtime to see if it changes anything, although she’s so tired lately because of all the night waking that getting to 8pm is challenging. And, despite how tired she is, she still lays awake for 45 min or so before nodding off. It’s crazy. I HAVE talked to the pediatrician about this, and she is the one that suggested trying a slightly later bedtime. Other than that, the advice I received was “turn the monitor off and get some sleep, and pay no attention to the fact that she’s awake all night”. THAT seemed like crap advice to me, seeing as it does nothing to fix the problem, even if it DOES get me a few hours of sleep. I might’ve taken the advice if the problem was new and short-lived, but being that it’s been going on for over 4 months now, I’m more inclined to fix the problem than to pray that she outgrows it! And yes, on the really bad nights, it means she only gets about 7 hours of sleep all night. It’s usually more like 8-9, but that is still quite short of what she should be getting, especially since she isn’t making up for it by taking monster naps- they’re usually only a little over an hour!!! I am quite sure she is awake for those hours during the night, as I watch her on the monitor- tossing, turning, kicking her feet up on the side of the crib, playing with her blankie, “fluffing” her blankets and stuffed animals, etc. In fact, last night she actually waved at me through the monitor when she saw the infrared light pop on when I checked in on her..! She doesn’t ever seem to “play” in bed, more just lays there, flopping around trying to get back to sleep. It is BEYOND ME how she can stay in there awake for so long without losing her cool. Though as the hours tick by, she does whine a bit on and off sometimes, but almost never cries out for me at all. When it started (or, when I noticed it for the first times), she was in a period of getting colds one after another, including ear infections- so we blamed it all on that. But then she got healthy, so we blamed it on teething, but now, I’ve got nothing left to blame it on! I’m so desperate for a solution because I’m due to have baby #2 in 6 weeks from now, and a crying newborn isn’t going to do anything for helping my daughter to get more sleep during the night. I’m feeling so hopeless, especially since YOU (my savior when my daughter was an infant) seem to be stumped as well!!!
Well don’t feel hopeless! This is actually good news in that she is:
1) Happy in there.
2) Thriving
3) Seemingly having no ill effects from it.
So on all fronts things couldn’t be going better. Why she’s awake is mysterious but babies are like that. I asked a local pediatric sleep specialist (actual MD type person) about sleep disorders and he said that pretty much the only thing you’ll see in kids under 2 is apnea (which is not what you have). Other sleep disorders only show up in older kids. So given that we can safely rule out sleep disorders.
And if there was something mysteriously making it hard for her to sleep – say reflux or some other common baby ailment – she would be unhappy (there would be no waving to the camera).
So if there is nothing to do, kid is happy, kid is growing and thriving, then I’m inclined to go with the pediatrician and say “turn off the monitor.” You’re due in 6 weeks so carpe diem, no?
Don’t be hopeless! It’ll likely stop as mysteriously as it started and you’ll forever be none the wiser. So be it :)Congratulations on your new baby!
I don’t like to be stumped so I got out my clinical pediatric sleep book (note: I am NOT a pediatrician so don’t mistake me for somebody who is qualified to give medical advice) and the only thing I could find that sounded remotely plausible would be restless leg syndrome.
This is a biological disorder so it’s highly unlikely in any case and REALLY REALLY unlikely unless somebody in your immediate family also has it. It’s also not something you can really treat other than by doing what you’re already doing:
– avoid stimulants (stop feeding baby coffee)
– have good sleep hygiene
– use dark lights to encourage melatonin production
– mild exercise (um…OK)
Honestly I doubt this is the issue. And I don’t want to freak out a pregnant woman with super rare stuff like this. But if you’re probing the pediatrician anyway, maybe bring it up and get their take on it? 99% chance she’s just fine and doing mysterious toddler stuff. Because toddlers are mysterious like that more than you might guess.
Alexis, do you have Ferber’s book? Silly question, of course you do… I stumbled upon a theory of his that seems to be pretty close to my situation, so we are giving it a shot for the next week or two. In chapter 11 he talks about the “too-long-in-bed” problem and how it can cause nite wakings because we are expecting too many hours of sleep per nite. He suggests a late bedtime, in line with the child’s natural sleep rhythm will fix the problem. So, we’ve been putting my daughter down at 8:15 instead of 7:30, since she doesn’t fall asleep for an hour anyway when we put her down at 7:30. The first night she was asleep by 8:45, last night by 9 (still a long time!), but she did sleep thru the night both nights. In NO WAY am I fooled into thinking my problem is solved, but perhaps it’s a step in the right direction.
You crack me up, diving into your clinical ped book- that’s SO something I would do! I hate not having an answer for a problem, which is part of why I am driving myself crazy with this whole sleep problem in the first place! I will definitely pick the pediatrician’s brain when we are there in a few weeks for our 2 week checkup! Thanks for your persistence and curiosity in our problem! I’ll let ya know if the Ferber theory works out! 😊
Hi Katy
Just wanted to say we went through horrible long night wakings with my son from the time he was about 5-10 months old. A very long 5 months it was! I read about Ferber’s too long in bed problem and I found it hard to believe because my son was exhausted in the evening and we couldn’t keep him up past 7. Some nights he was ready for bed at 5:30! Everyone tells you early bedtime is best. But there is always a tiny % of people who don’t fit the mold and our children are probably part of that group! At 10 months we finally got him staying up past 7:30 and it made such a huge difference. The night wakings stopped! His wakings were long too..usually 1.5-2 hours. He too didn’t sleep in after the long wakings and he continued to take crappy naps. It was insanely frustrating for us. He also sleeps less than average- 10 hours a night. Ferber also mentions the owl and the lark, saying kids have earlier or later bed/wake times. Your daughter may need a slightly later schedule. I do know some people with 2 year olds who put them to bed at 9 and they will sleep til 7:30/8:00am. I know it’s not advice that would apply to a lot of people, but you have to try anything when standard advice doesn’t seem to work. Has she been sleeping longer than 8-9 hours if you put her down later at night? Good luck!!
If the naps while nursing are counted as naps, then our almost-six-month guy takes.. a lot of naps. He’s been a 30 minute like clockwork napper since he was ~2 months old. He’s occasionally taking longer naps now, but yikes. As I’ve talked to Alexis about before, we’re still working on fixing a late bedtime issue. He’s been stuck around 9:45pm for a while now. He wakes up himself between 6-7am most days now, otherwise I get him by 7:30am at the latest. He often sleeps through his first feeding (nap #1 I guess!), up for 1.5-2 hours, then 30 minute nap. Then up, usually naps another 10-20 minutes while eating; rinse, repeat. He doesn’t sleep during every feeding, but at least half of them. I have a low supply so I feel like for him I’m the most cuddly warm pacifier with an occasional bump of milk, haha.
He now can fall asleep by himself in his crib after being put down awake (I’m still amazed at how easily that all went after rocking him to sleep in our arms for 5 months) so I know the short naps aren’t due to that. He often wakes up, fusses or chats and goes back to sleep in the early morning as well.
He does eat 6 times a day though with nursing+supplement, and I’ll be talking to the pediatrician about it next week because I do often wonder if the nap situation is because he’s hungry and maybe they’d consolidate/not nap while eating so much if he just had bigger meals. And I also wonder if adding in solids will help out. I guess this is all talking out loud, but Alexis – does any of that sound reasonable?
Fist of low supply solidarity! Yeah it does make everything more confusing. But if you’re supplementing then let’s go with the assumption that it’s not because he’s hungry. Also solids rarely help. Keep in mind that most early solids are essentially fiber and water. So they’re filling but low cal, much lower than BM. Don’t view solids as “tanking him up” view them as a fun thing to practice with after he’s had a solid liquid feeding.
I’m wondering if those nursing naps are throwing you off. You need an age-appropriate period of being awake to accrue enough of a sleep debt to then nap for longer periods. If he’s awake 2 hours between naps but taking a 20 minute “nurse nap” in that window, then it’s going to take the edge off his fatigue. It would totally explain why you’re stuck in 30 minute nap land.
Thoughts?
Alexis, thank you! We had the experience of munchkin being dehydrated by the time he got home (but they caught it at the hospital that he had lost too much weight so we were already supplementing) and we’ve been struggling with supply since. I spent 3+ months stressing over increasing it when I finally accepted where we’re at, which is a little less than half his daily calories. Anyway! Long story (not so) short, we’ve been doing this nursing and bottle rigmarole for months now (before I pumped exclusively because he had issues nursing, glad that time is over with). I feel like this always happens, once I’m desperate enough to call out for help because he’s been stuck in a pattern for what feels like forever, things start changing.
He had 3 days in a row where he had one nap that was at least 1.5 hours long, yesterday I think he was going to nap longer but I got home bashing my way in from the garage with an unwieldy new car seat box and woke him up. I can definitely see what you mean about the nursing nap interfering with proper napping, I do keep him up extra time to compensate for the nap while eating but sometimes he’s getting really crabby when it’s only been 1.5 hours total time up. I don’t know if he’s working up to a growth spurt or developmental thing but feeding has been such a fight lately (yanking and being extra distracted nursing plus not wanting the bottle until he’s starving). But he has also been sleeping less while nursing, so there is that. And while I type this, he made some noises but looks like he’s settled into a 1.5 hour nap at least.
So I think I’ll try to stay the course of whatever we’re doing now (um, nothing different that I can really pinpoint) and if he goes back to the 30 minute naps for days on end we’ll try keeping him up longer to compensate for nursing naps.
I am still quite confused. My dearest son is 15 months old and still naps twice a day BUT his first nap is a wonder but his second mid-afternoon is 1/kept very short as it may end too close to bed time 2/takes forever to fall asleep to. It looks like I need to stop the second nap, or doesn’t it? Can anyone help? Please?
This is what happened to us…daughter would play happily through the whole afternoon nap. A sudden transition worked well for us- one weekend we just kept her awake until noon (instead of going down for nap at 1030). She was tired in the morning the first couple days, but other than that it worked like a charm. We went from two 1.5 hr naps to one 2-3 hr nap. Something to try maybe? Good luck!
Paige – do you feed her lunch right before her one nap? What, if you don’t mind sharing, is your meal/snack and bed/wake schedule like? Thanks!
OK, so wake up 700-730, breakfast right away, snack around 930, lunch about 1100-1130, nap 1200-230 or so, snack right when she wakes up, dinner around 630, bed about 730. She was about 11 months when we dropped to one nap, so her meals/snacks were still mostly formula with solids really only for fun. But now that she’s almost 2 it still works fine (the only time she seems to wake up starving is in the morning).
Thanks!
My son dropped to one nap on his first birthday (refused his AM nap for the first time so we pushed it an hour later and he slept for 2 hours).
Our daily schedule (at 13.5 months) looks like:
Wake up 7-7:30 – bottle
Breakfast 8-8:30
Snack 9:30-10
Lunch 11:30
Nap 12:00-12:30 (typically 1.5 to 2 hours)
Bottle after nap (~2-2:30)
Snack 4:00
Dinner 5:30
Bedtime 6:30-6:45 (small bottle at bedtime)
Incidentally, he would intermittently fight his afternoon nap from about 10 months to 12 months, but never with enough of a pattern to suggest he was ready for 1 nap.
Him refusing his morning nap was a clear signal something had changed. It took a month or so to work from an 11am first nap to a noon first nap. We’re now working on making it 12:30 and I’m looking forward to it shifting later so we can go out for lunch. 🙂
Thank you, very helpful indeed. We are now trying one nap per day. Let’s see! sx
He’s in the age bracket where a lot of kids drop that second nap. That’s exactly how my son behaved when he was ready to drop his second nap. I just scooted the morning nap to about noon or a little after and within a week or so he was napping 2 solid hours once a day instead 2 shorter naps a day. It meant going through a bit of crankiness but he seemed to have completely adjusted to his new schedule in a couple of weeks.
Thank you! It just felt a bit early but I guess we all dread the change…xx
Yeah I think you’re headed towards some nap droppage there. He’s having a hard time falling asleep and that’s a good cue. It doesn’t mean you need to stop the second nap tomorrow but as it gets harder for him to take a second nap you’ll find it’s easier just to skip the AM nap and have the PM nap come earlier than it is now.
Thank you Alexis, I had internet problems and couldn’t reply nor read anybody else’s comment. The problem is still very much unresolved. Refusing the second nap but when he has only one, just after lunch it’s a short one. So all in all, when a month ago he was sleeping around 14hrs now he sleeps 12 hrs to 12 and 1/2 hrs. That’s really bad and as a result he wakes up extremely early… And cranky! I’ll do as you said in an earlier post: put him to bed earlier, move the first nap a bit later and slowly pushing it until after lunch…let’s see. Thanks again!
Timely post! My son (almost 16 months) might need to go to one nap soon, as at least half the days he boycotts his afternoon nap. Morning nap is still 1.5 – 2 hours. Bedtime is 7 pm. He falls asleep 100% on his own – he hates being rocked and stinks at cuddling – mr. Independent!
He has been getting up earlier than he used to (6:30 on a good day, 5 am on a bad day) and can barely make it til 9 am for his nap. Any suggestions for how to go to one nap? Should I just try pushing it later and later very slowly? Or wake him up after a brief nap? Ideally I would like him to take a nice long after lunch nap if I have to give up my 2 naps.
We had the same issue when my daughter transitioned. What ultimately worked for us was shortening her morning nap more and more ,in order to maintain the afternoon nap, over the course of a couple of months, until the morning nap was down to only 20-30 min and then cut it out completely. As the morning nap got shorter, the pm nap got earlier which allowed for an easy transition to one nap once we cut the morning nap out completely. And with the earlier second nap came a slightly earlier bedtime, which sorted out the whole early rising situation. Good luck!
Thanks Katy! That sounds do-able. Knock on wood, he has figured out how to put himself back to sleep @ 5 am the last few mornings and gone til 6:30, which is much more reasonable.
I am gonna see what happens with nap 2 this week, and then probably start your plan soon to transition if nap 2 is still elusive. I was hoping he would keep 2 naps til spring, since we live in upstate NY and keeping him entertained all morning inside is a challenge!
We’re having this problem also with my 17 month old.
He’s been getting up WAY earlier than he used to; 6:30 on a good day, 5 on a bad day (when it used to be closer to 8-8:30) and can barely make 9 am before he’s ready for a nap. We try to push it until 10 am and then he’ll nap a solid 90 minutes, up for approx 3 hours and then another 60-90 minute nap. Bedtime is 7:30.
Falls asleep on his own for bed and naps, always the same routine (white noise, dark room, etc).
I’ve been wondering if we should slowly start transitioning to one nap. I can’t handle these 5 am wake ups!
You might try waking him up at 3:30pm from his second nap and putting him to bed earlier (so there’s a good gap between nap and bedtime). We found an earlier bedtime worked well – didn’t make him wake up earlier, and as he got more rested, he started sleeping more total, eventually resulting in a later morning wakeup time.
Melanie,
I definitely think you’ve got some nap transition stuff going on. But I also wanted to say that as kids get older their need for sleep decreases. It’s pretty unusual to sleep 13 hours a night so I think you’ve got TWO things going on – nap droppage and he’s needing less sleep at night.
Also – ditto to what Crystal said 🙂
Hey Annie,
As kids get older their need for sleep decreases. I’m wondering if the earlier wakeup is related to that. I mean 7-6:30 is still FANTASTIC. 5 AM is a bit rough but these things happen sometimes:P
Both of those things would be great to experiment with – pushing his AM nap later might work but you may run into issues where he still needs a 2nd nap but now it’s closing in on bedtime. For that reason I might start with waking him up after a shorter AM nap and trying to make a longer PM nap happen.
Oh I just noticed that’s what Katy said. So um…ditto!
I have a pair of 25 month old twin girls. When we were transitioning from two naps to one, they were about 22months old. They did miss their morning nap a little, but I moved their afternoon nap up to 12.30midday thereabouts and kept them occupied with activities in the morning so that they stayed active and engaged. Then when their one and only nap rolled around, they would be so tired that they would voluntarily climb the stairs to their bedroom and roll into bed. Sometimes they would even ask for bed if they’ve had enough play and wanted to sleep!
I thankfully, get a nice chunky two hour nap out of them. Their bedtime is 8pm.
I never thought it would get better, but it did!
Good luck to everyone on their sleep journey!
See? If Leslie can do it with TWINS the the rest of us can definitely manage 😉
Our 13-and-a-half month old began skipping his first nap two or three weeks ago. We’ve had decent results with switching to a one-nap schedule where the nap begins at 11 am. but there are two problems: one, he nap is often short (45 minutes at most) and he’s waking up at around 5 am. Thoughts, anyone?
Alain,
Your gravitar (little face that is generated automatically) looks so worried. Why so stressed Alain!!! 🙂
Have you tried shifting bedtime up? Baby may need to go to bed 30-60 minutes earlier now that he’s only taking one nap. Try it for 5 days and see what happens!
That’s my sleepless look 🙂
So, my 17 month old just went from two naps to one. Pretty easily actually. He still doesn’t fall asleep on his own though and still wakes up thru the night. Daycare puts him down for a nap while awake, but she tells me he screams and cries for half hour to 45 minutes before he falls asleep. At this stage in the game, how I teach him to fall asleep on his own and sleep in his own bed? I have tried CIO before (for months at a time), with no end to the crying or waking. If only I could go back in time….lol, I would have done things differently! Of maybe it’s just him?
Holly,
If he screams for 30-45 minutes every day at daycare I’m thinking:
a) There is something in the environment that makes it hard for him to sleep (bright light? too noisy?)
-or-
b) Naptime is too early/too late
That’s a lot of crying to be happening EVERY day. Maybe there are some small tweaks that would help?
Sadly he’ll still keep waking up at night until he falls asleep on his own – those are inexorably linked. Why did CIO go on for months? Hard to say. There are lots of little details that can set you up for a rough time – inconsistency, bedtime too early, bedtime to late, intermittent reinforcement. It’s a bit of a tricky wicket. But it sounds like sleep isn’t great for any of you so maybe it’s time to re-evaluate what is happening? Good luck, I know it’s not easy stuff.
Hi Alexis. I am so desperate for a solution for my 6 month old short napper that I am wondering if a nap transition might be it? I have read the short naps post a million times. Baby has fallen asleep on her own (with a little bit of fussing) since 4 months. Has slept beautifully through the night since around then – 11 hrs on avg with maybe one feed. But naps have been 28-35 minutes almost without fail since around the same time! I have tried everything – shortening wake time, lengthening wake time, nursing nowhere NEAR the nap, nursing right before the nap, solids, no solids… She takes 3 of these tiny naps a day. The last one has been more like 18-25 minutes. Could dropping this nap be a solution?
I’d be curious to know the solution to this too because I’m in the same exact spot. My 6 month old has been a cat napper from day one and I’ve tried eeeeeverything to change it. He’ll take a decent nap (1.5 hours) maybe once a month. Otherwise it’s day in and day out of 20-30 min naps. I haven’t tried pushing his awake time to more than 2.5 hours, but should I be?
My baby now 7.5 months was a catnapper too and I read the cat nap post over and over again! I tried everything too and she was putting herself to sleep but still sleeping 40 minutes! She sleeps 11-12 hours at night, no problem. I was so discouraged because I thought by 6 months she should be taking long naps. And then it just happened! Around 6 months the very infrequent longer nap started happening more often and then by 7 months the long naps were more often than the short ones. We still have a few short naps from time to time, so those days we usually have 3 naps 2-3 hours apart and on the longer nap days we can usually manage with 2 naps 3 hours apart. I felt like it would never get better and I know it’s rough right now, but it sounds like you are doing everything right so hang in there and it will probably just happen soon. Some babies take longer to develop the traditional naps. 🙂 (I did a lot of internet reading-other people say the same thing!)
Thank you Kristin. You are right about feeling discouraged. It gives me hope to hear that your little one started getting there after 6 months. Everything I read made me believe that short naps are annoying but normal before 6 months; afterwards, abnormal! I know it is silly to cling so hard to a birthday, and that even a few weeks might make a major difference. I gather your advice would be not to force a nap transition then, but just go with the three shorter naps for now and wait for the longer naps to come before considering a transition.
I think stick with 3, but I know sometimes the 3rd one is kind of hard. Sometimes it gets so close to bedtime that we skip it. My daughter always fights the 3rd nap, but otherwise she might be up for 5+ hours before bedtime if she takes a short afternoon nap. She’d literally stay up all day if I’d let her! The on the go naps don’t work for us-she never falls asleep in the car or stroller or being carried. She has to be in the crib!
Kristin and Sabrina,
I also have an almost 12-month-old catnapper, who sleeps decently at night, but struggles with naps! However, things haven’t gone better yet. It seems to me that it’s a separation anxiety issue, because she does nap a lot better with caregivers other than my partner and I. She also very rarely sleeps anywhere but in the crib (but again at daycare or with sitters she might as well fall asleep on the floor).
I just wanted to agree with Kristin, Sabrina: dropping a nap at that age seems way too early! We actually had to move back to three recently, even though she had got to two with her nanny. But that was when she was around 9 months and only because she was taking really long naps with her, so I think in your case it’s really best to stick with three: as painful as they are it’s better than the alternative!
You guys have read that post a million times? I thought I had 1 million readers, turns out I’ve only got 2 😉
I don’t think you have a nap dropping situation – a 6 month old taking itty bitty crap naps will NEED 3X a day. Partly day sleep consolidation is a developmental thing – like Kirsten experienced – it’ll happen. There are also some potential things that could be factoring in there.
– Naps happening too early/late.
– Not enough soothing – he may need to be swaddled, often babies need it for napping and not bedtime. Make sure room is DARK and white noise is LOUD.
– More of a wind-down. Is your pre-nap routine working for you?
While you don’t want to make this a “thing” you can also try the wake to sleep method Basically you go in at say 22 minutes and jostle him slightly to wake him up a tiny bit. Sometimes this helps shake up the sleep cycle and get baby sleeping longer.
Magoobey, the 1 long nap here and there is a good sign. Personally for a 6 month old I would stick to 2 hours. Maybe even shorter in the am – say 1.5 hours after he wakes up, 2 hours after nap #1.
Good luck guys!
I must share for inspiration to those struggling with short naps: I rode out the storm, and sure enough around 7 months, she just randomly started taking longer day naps. At first I thought it was because she was tired from a cold, then exhausted from teething… but whatever, they appear to be here to stay! My itty bitty frustrating catnapper now takes 1.5 h twice a day. This is not a gloat but a plea for those of you going crazy with short naps to hang in there – keep doing everything you’re doing, and I hope your baby’s brain will eventually get with the program, as mine did.
I am so happy to have found your website!! We’ve been having nap problems with our 5 month old and a friend referred me here 🙂 Our little girl takes 2-3 naps a day, typically 45-60 minutes in length. She sleeps in a crib, we keep the room dark, use white noise, pacifier and swaddle her. For naps we sing her a song and get her drowsy (but not asleep) before putting her down. We try to keep her up around 1.5-2 hours between naps, and we put her down at night between 6-6:30 p.m. Night wakings vary, but she’s often up 1-2 during the night and wakes up for the day 5:30 ish.
The last several days she’s only been taking 2, 45-60 minute naps. I can’t get her settled enough to take a 3rd nap which is ridiculous because she is so exhausted. After trying to soothe her/get her drowsy and mostly asleep, I’ll put her down and she starts crying. I nurse her during the day every 3-3.5 hours typically right after she wakes up. I try not to feed her before naps to avoid feed/sleep association.
Do you have any suggestions on what to do? Should we drop down to 2 naps already? It seems too soon to do that, but I don’t know. And if that’s what we do, when should I nurse her?
It’s funny you should post about dropping naps…..it’s like you read my mind : ) Over the last week, my son has learned to stand and sit in his crib (he mostly sits). It occasionally affects his naps (there was one day he wouldn’t nap until late in the afternoon and yesterday his am nap was only 15 minutes). Night sleep (which stunk to begin with) is affected too because he sits up and I don’t think he knows how to get back down. How do I know if this trouble is due to dropping naps or because of his new love for sitting in the crib? And how in the world do you do CIO at night (to get him to sleep more then a couple hours at a time and wean from night nursing) when he sits up and won’t go back down? Thanks for your help!
Hey Heather,
It’s hard to say as I don’t know how old your son is but I would PRACTICE during the day. Prop him on the couch and make him sit back down. Have him sit down and put something awesome (like an apple puff or whatnot) where he’ll need to lie down to reach it.
Babies often sleep crappy when they’re learning a new skill and it’s not unusual to see a baby who is too busy practicing to bother sleeping. But if he’s getting stuck, you want to spend time teaching him how to get UNstuck. If he CAN get back down and DOESN’T – that’s his business. If he CAN’T get back down, the answer is daytime practicing.
Hi Alexis
Our daughter is almost 19 months and we dropped from 2 naps to 1 when she was 17 months. The second nap was starting way too late and then bedtime was effected as a result.
Anyways, before the transition, she would take a 1-1.5 hour nap in the morning and a 1 hour nap in the afternoon with 12 hours of sleep at night. Since the transition, her one nap only lasts 30-45 min (60 max on a rare day) and she gets up cranky and is fussy until bedtime at 7pm. Once in bed at night, she’ll sleep 12-12.5 hours but I’m worried she’s not getting enough daytime sleep. She falls asleep unassisted in a dark room as she always has and the only thing differrent is that she eats lunch right before her nap rather than eating after her nap like she used to.
Do you think we dropped a nap too soon? And now that she’s 19 months, and there’s really no going back, is there anything you can suggest to help us get her to nap longer and take a more restorative nap during the day? Thank you so much! I love reading your posts 🙂
Yeah, there is no going back now. I might play around with when the nap happens. And I might experiment with not getting her until 60 minutes. Maybe you set up a nightlight on a timer so that it doesn’t go on until 60 minutes have passed. Tell her that it’s quiet time in her crib until the “wake up” light comes on. Generally having kids cry post-nap isn’t an awesome idea but in this case I think it’s worth experimenting with.
And no – I don’t think you dropped a nap too soon. But I do think some small tweaks might help get that afternoon nap up to 1-1.5 hours. But don’t worry about her sleep – most kids DON’T sleep 12.5 hours at night so on net she’s doing great 🙂
What about if your child fights the MORNING nap, but goes down relatively easily for the afternoon nap?
I’m trying to figure out what our issue is around here. My daughter is 13 months and has never really been a champion napper (I give her a “C”), since her naps have never been longer than 1 hour at a time. Recently, she has been waking up at night again (long story about that. It seems to be related to Wonder Weeks, and we have a similar problem every time one rolls around). She cries and screams and is generally miserable although clearly tired. We let her cry for a while, but we always end up going in, comforting her, and then leaving. Once she does settle back down, she starts crying again 15-20 minutes later. Some nights this can last 2-3 hours. The only thing that seems to help is rocking her fully back to sleep. She goes to bed easily and fully awake between 6 and 6:30 every night. She gets up for the day between 6-6:30. All this, and she fights her morning nap. So I’m trying to figure out if she needs to drop a nap, or if she’s behaving like this because she isn’t getting ENOUGH sleep.
I should add that’s she’s also teething her two top front teeth (late teether), and the teeth are taking FOREVER to come through (although I can see the tips).
Fighting the morning nap is definitely a possible sign. For sure.
I hear you about wonder weeks but I would be careful. Sometimes the way we respond to night wakings (a la this “The only thing that seems to help is rocking her fully back to sleep. “) can reinforce the night wakings. Intermittent reinforcement is worse than going in all the time, right away. So if she’s awake for 20 minutes and then you go rock her to sleep, you’re actually rewarding her being awake. Does that make sense?
I know it’s super confusing and your instinct is to provide love and cuddles. But if this is happening for 2-3 hours a night my spidey sense says that the way you’re interacting with her at night is actually prolonging things. Sometimes ignoring feels really mean but it also cuts out the night waking and vastly increases the hours of sleep in the day. Something to consider?
No, it makes PERFECT sense (I used to be an ABA Therapist, so controlling reinforcement was part of my job). I AM worried that we have trained her to wake up, but her behavior is so erratic that it’s hard to figure out. She hasn’t really had sleep problems up to this point except for the predictable sleep regressions. I should clarify, however, that the 2-3 hour nights were nights when we used a Pick up/Put Down approach. So it kind of DOES seem like any kind of attention is reinforcing the waking.
We used a controlled crying approach last night where we didn’t check on her at all, and it was fine except that our only bathroom is off her room and my husband needed to use it during her third (and last) wakeup, so she ended up crying for 30 more minutes and then nursing because she didn’t stop crying even when I picked her up (it was around 4:30am and I was afraid she’d just start the day if I waited any longer). So…any comments?
In case anyone is following our saga…the night wakings mysteriously cleared up on their own without us actually doing very much. I still blame Wonder Weeks. 😉
Also…thanks for your response, Alexis! I know you’re really busy! I’ll keep it in mind for next time.
OK I will too. Stupid wonder week!
My 8 mos old is NIGHT sleep trained (put down at 6:30 awake), sleeps until 5am <- not happy about the 5am but don't know what to do and waiting on your promise article on that topic! 🙂
BUT he's not NAP trained. ALWAYS must be put down asleep. Sometimes lasts for 30 min, sometimes lasts for 1.5hrs (so not consistently awful). What to do when I know he can self soothe to sleep (we CIO for any random night awakenings too) but he just can't for a nap???
Hey Judy,
Well the 5 AM thing isn’t a “problem” it means he’s slept his full night. He’s sleeping from 6:30 PM – 5 AM which is close to 11 hours. Have you seen the article below on sleeping 12 hours at night? Check it out.
The issue you have is that the part of the brain that manages night sleep is different from day sleep so the night sleep skills don’t transfer. So no, she CAN’T self soothe for naps because he hasn’t learned how to fall asleep at naptime. Frustrating but true.
sooo…any tips on teaching to self soothe for naps…? 🙂 Same CIO? Or at 8months have we missed the window.
That’s a longer issue than I could address here. You don’t have to do CIO necessarily but it may certainly be an option to consider. I’ll say this – you want a good foundation in place before you’ll be successful with any method. That includes:
– naps happen in the same place
– naps happen at the same time
– you have a consistent pre-nap wind-down routine
– Naps happen in a dark room with loud white noise
I know, not what you were hoping for. But naps are a huge issue. The nap chapter of my book (in draft) is currently 10,000 words long. It’s a tricky wicket for lots of people.
So read my mind! I needed this post, not that it helps me any for what to do. I have a 5.5 month old and am at a loss for his naps. He generally goes down about 1.5 hours after waking up (so now generally around 8 am) and usually will sleep for 1 – 1.5 hours. Then every other nap is a crap shoot, generally he takes another 3 naps (sometimes just 2) that last only 30 min. He’s not on a schedule yet because I don’t know if it’s wise to force him to stay awake past his awake period (about 1.5-2 hours now) so I’ve been going with his flow, but his other naps won’t extend. I know he can sleep longer since his morning nap is good, I want to know how to extend his other naps. Since the naps are so short and so is his awake period he needs the 4th nap (usually around 4ish) or his 3rd nap (usually around 2ish) leaves to long of a period between the last nap of the day and bedtime (generally around 7 pm). We do still use the pacifier so I know that needs to be gotten rid of soon (we are transitioning the crib now so I want to keep it until he will sleep in the crib – that’s a whole other issue), but he can sleep for 1.5 hours so I know the pacifier isn’t the major issue. So how do you force the nap to last longer – yes I’ve read the short nap article and that just tells me to deal with it which means just go with the flow of 3 craptastic naps since I’m getting 1 good one at least?
We are in the EXACT same boat with our 6 month old…
Shoot and of course I jinxed myself by writing that. For about a week he would sleep for 1-1.5 hours for his morning nap and now we’re back down to just 30 min. Mama needs some time to herself! He is happy when he wakes up, but usually about 30 min later he is already beginning to do some eye rubbing so I figure the nap itself isn’t really long enough for him, but I know he isn’t ready to go back down after just 30 min. What do you recommend?
Hey Jen,
The short answer is: accept the craptastic naps.
The long answer is: he’s starting to consolidate day sleep. This is developmental and the fact that he’s doing one is FANTASTIC. Trust me there are plenty of parents who have -zero- at 5 months. Keep the timing a bit flexible and have faith. And there should bea a longer period of awake time between his last nap and bedtime – this is normal.
So yes, deal with it is sort of where you’re at 😉
My 7 month old is taking 3 naps per day but 20 minutes at a time!! I assume we should continue the 3 naps rather than consolidating into 2. But is he going to at some point lengthen his naps by himself or should we be doing something to help him nap longer?
Hey Nan,
This sounds more like a “put down awake” issue. Have you read this? http://www.troublesometots.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-i/
With super craptastic naps like that you won’t be able to take just 2 naps because you would end up with a baby who is awake far too long at some point. Getting naps sorted out is tricky (my nap chapter is already 10,000 words which is crazypants long). But putting them down awake is key. Good luck!
I’m trying to figure out if my almost-2-yo in that special 1% of kids who legitimately don’t need to nap anymore. Ever since 19 months, she has had phases of not napping – plays for a while, escalating to crying, so after about an hour of attempting the nap, I get her up. This phase is the longest one yet – she has only taken a couple of naps in the past few weeks and it just feels more “final” like it did when she went from 2 naps to 1 after a few teaser phases of it … the other phases lasted a few days and she seemed to genuinely need the nap she was fighting. She makes it through the day to bedtime just fine. I just can’t force the nap to happen like it still should be able to at this age.
Our former schedule was: wake up around 6 or 6:30, nap around 1 or 1:30-3, bedtime 7:30, asleep around 8. Our current one is, wake up at 7, try unsuccessfully to nap from 1-2, go to bed at 7. So she’s getting those 12 hours of sleep (always been on the low end of sleep needs), just all at night instead of having a nap. Would different timing help us? Changing to a different pre-nap routine (it hasn’t changed since we instituted it in infancy)? She falls asleep on her own, we have white noise on, room darkening blinds, all that good stuff.
Also, how long until it’s no longer a phase and I just accept that napping isn’t going to happen and find some other mid-day activity to give her some way of resting (ride in the car – this doesn’t lull her to sleep like it does most kids, or stroller ride when it stops snowing)? I know it’s beneficial for her to spend that former-nap-time resting in the crib, but she doesn’t really get the concept of quiet time yet. Or, would it help her if I only put her down to nap every other day? Curious for any tips that have helped a nap-refusing toddler to get back to napping.
Yeah, I’d also like to know how long until it’s no longer considered a “phase.” I suppose, however, that you could continue to institute “quiet time in a dark, boring room” until you’re totally ready to give up on the nap.
I just question the value of “rest” time for a child not old enough to understand it. Sure, I could see a 3 or 4 year old willingly lying in their bed looking at books. A toddler standing in her crib yelling “all done” for an hour (I can’t let her go that long most days as it’s just not constructive) is not as restful as other activities we could be doing. There has to be a better way.
I would definitely switch to quiet time. Quiet time doesn’t HAVE to be in the crib and it doesn’t HAVE to be really dark. Let her pick a handful of toys (nothing she could choke on) and books that she can play with in her room with dim lighting. This quiet time can be almost as restorative as a nap (for you both ;). She has a chance to practice entertaining herself. Use a timer and be clear that quiet time is over when the timer dings. If she’s tired and falls asleep while playing (this will happen occasionally) great! If not, still great. I strongly recommend quiet time vs. “done with nap and now it’s all play all the time” especially given that she’s on the younger side.
Thoughts?
Thanks, Alexis! After I posted this she did actually nap again some days. It really does seem unlikely that she would truly be ready to drop the nap at this young age because when she does nap, it is still a long nap (1.5 hrs or more).
We decided to dig in and to not get her up after an hour or less, but to go back in and remind her it’s still nap time. This is of course met with tons of screaming and crying, but if I give it longer, she eventually conks out…for a long time. So some days she has taken a long nap (2.5-3 hrs), and slept less at night (9-10 hrs). Not sure this is ideal, and it feels wrong to wake her from a nap that was so hard-fought … but mostly it feels horrible for her to have to scream herself to sleep for napping, and doesn’t seem like this should happen at all so long after originally mastering falling asleep by herself!
So, if you don’t mind, my follow up questions are:
-How long should I give it before giving up on the nap? I used to think 45-60 min, but then on days that I gave it closer to 1.5 hrs she did fall asleep.
-Or, if it’s often going to take that long, how do we minimize the screaming? I could understand a few days of it but not on and off for weeks – help!
-Or could it be a timing issue? When do kids who sleep that “usual” 7:30p-6:30a typically nap? Her nap has crept later ever since we transitioned to 1 nap, and it seemed like it was getting too late (1:30pm with a 6-6:30am wakeup), but maybe pushing it to 2pm would help ensure that she really is tired?
-When naps do happen, do you recommend waking from them in order to keep bedtime reasonable and lengthen night sleep to at least 10 hours? If so, limit to 1.5 hrs, or how long? Or just accept shorter nights and longer naps?
-If we enforce “quiet time” (figuring that even if she isn’t quiet or trying to rest, maybe she will eventually learn to …) do you find that those clocks that turn to green when it’s okay to get up are a good idea / do you recommend a particular one of those?
Thanks again so much!
Definitely experiment with 1:30/2 and see what happens. Because nobody wants the daily screaming. Sure she’s young to drop a nap but if her night sleep is getting shorter it makes me wonder if she IS. I like the quiet time idea because the room is dim and quiet. She will very likely fall asleep while playing quietly but hopefully giving her the option to play or read will minimize screaming. If she falls asleep – great! If not, quiet time is over at 2.
You don’t want her sleeping so late that it blows bedtime so yes you might need to limit how long she sleeps so she can easily fall asleep at bedtime.
And lastly – the clocks are definitely a good idea. I like this one:
http://www.troublesometots.com/how-to-use-a-toddler-alarm-clock/
good luck!
Wow this is my exact problem with my son, almost 22 mos old. He screams without winding down for 40 plus mins before I get him up from the nap and give up. We have been doing this for almost 4 months now (previously sleep trained successfully) Yet every day I keep trying.
Is “rest time” with me in the room? Or alone in his room? Or is he in the crib with his toys and books? I will try the toddler alarm clock, commit to a full hour in his room, and I will try an earlier bedtime too. Thanks! You have helped me before and you’re basically my hero.
My 9 month old daughter goes to an in-home daycare Monday – Thursday. At home with her father or I, she goes down for at least a hour nap in the morning and afternoon in her crib consistently. At daycare she stuggles to take two good naps most days. Often her naps are short (45min or less) or she just completely refuses to sleep. Consequently she can become very fussy. Many times her care giver puts her in a swing to get her to nap, too. I am not sure what to do to help my baby and her care giver with the napping problem. Any advice would be much appreciated!
Amanda,
That’s a toughie. If the caregiver puts her down at the same time you do in an environment as close to what you have at home, then there may not be much more to do. Is it too noisy there? Too bright? Generally at daycare the three issues are: noise, light, and naptime not aligned with baby’s body clock. If the swing is being used when she’s not napping at all, I guess it’s better than no nap?
Good luck,
Alexis
So my 10month old is currently fighting his second nap. Daily naps ave 2-2.5 hrs across 2 naps however durations are very random. Sometimes both naps are just over an hour, sometimes one short nap and one longer nap, sometimes he misses first or second nap entirely. He’s also started waking very early (5.30am) whereas he was normally getting up around anywhere 6.30-7.30am. Bedtime is usually around 7-7.30pm or earlier depending on last nap. He dropped the 3rd nap as of early December and I think it’s too early to drop to 1 nap but it seems the signs are there. Unless I’m wrong, which I could be. He’s been a terrible sleeper since 7weeks of age and we’ve worked really hard to get him to the point he will go to sleep independently (thanks for your website Alexis!!) for naps and night sleep. He no longer sleeps in the car unless completely utterly exhausted and then it’s micro 10min sleep. Pram stopped working when he was 4months old 🙁
I’m currently at a complete loss. No idea what it could be other than nap transition and/or teething issue. Suggestions/help appreciated! Problem is he’s very whiny if he doesn’t get enough sleep during the day so I think he still needs that second nap, unless transitioning to the one nap makes it a longer nap?
As an FYI, he puts himself to sleep for naps but still struggles going down for night sleep, although he sleeps solid 5-7hr blocks overnight before he wakes to feed. We’re starting to see encouraging signs he’s able to put himself to sleep for night sleep as well so I don’t think it’s related to some other issue. Never had a dummy, breastfed baby. He’s also going through a terrible time teething (eye teeth coming through poor little tyke!) and he’s starting to get very whiny with a few meltdowns every couple of days. His teeth came in relatively quickly, currently has 8 teeth with another 4 that I can see coming so it’s maybe a teething issue rather than a nap issue?? Argh!! That’s all I have to say, just arggghhh!!! Also sorry for the long post.
Ooof. Right there with you. My kids got all 20 teeth in sequence so teething was essentially a way of life for their entire baby/toddlerhood.
Honestly I’m guessing it’s teething+separation anxiety. He wants to be with you which leads to him fighting nap and rousing himself earlier. The sad news is that there is no great fix for this. You can do some practice separating during the day (I’m not convinced this helps but it won’t hurt). Walk out of sight saying, “Mom will be back in a minute!” Then come back in 1 minute with big kisses. Gradually expand how many minutes you’re gone (make sure baby is safe, obviously).
I would stick with naps. Although it’s best to stick with the same time for sleep, if he’s waking 2 hours earlier maybe naps need to shift up a bit too.
Sorry, I wish I had better news for you 🙁 If it helps at all, separation anxiety WILL get better. Eventually 😛
please help.
our 16month old son just switched to 1 nap. he started refusing his afternoon nap.. so it was time. the first few mornings after having one nap were amazing, he slept in until 7:30am! (which is unheard of for him) but now something changed & he is waking up at 5/5:30am. (too early for this momma) I don’t know what to do. He gets exhausted by 11:30am but I’ve been stretching it & putting him down at 12:30pm for his nap. he sleeps for 2-3 hours.. so he gets up around 3/3:30ish. his bedtime is 7:30 (but lately he’s been having a hard time falling asleep)
how do I help him (& me) sleep in longer?
Kortney,
If he’s having a hard time falling asleep I would let him nap earlier. Why not try 11:30 if he seems ready then? He’s taking a huge nap and probably needs more awake time between nap and bedtime. This could actually solve all your issues. Try it for 3-5 days and see what develops?
Good luck!
I’m right there with ya sisters. Navigating the nap minefield has kept me on my toes. My 10 month old is sleeping through the night 7ish -5am- ish and taking a chunk nap in the late am and a crap nap by 3 pm. I have tried to get him to sleep longer but I have just resigned myself to it now. I just try to cat/ crap nap a bit when he does. Lol! My fear is that once he drops that crap nap he will want to go to bed earlier, and be getting up earlier! I’m still sleep deprived, but not as much as I was when I wrote in last time, Alexis! Your sense of humors helps!!
Actually I was going to suggest an earlier schedule. 3 PM is actually kinda late for a PM nap especially if he’s starting the day at 5 AM. Maybe things need to shift up? If his PM nap happened earlier it may or may not be less crappy. But it also might create an opportunity for his bedtime to shift up a bit. And that might either make his night sleep longer (morning stays the same) or might help his wake up shift out a bit.
I’m thinking experimenting with schedule tweaks is the way to go!
Okay, so my 6 month old is all of a sudden all over the place with naps. The ONLY decent nap he will take is his first nap of the day, which is usually 1-1.5 hours. After that, it’s all up for grabs. Sometimes he’ll take a mid-afternoon nap, sometimes he won’t. He is fighting the third nap something awful. He decided at around 5 months he wasn’t interested in the paci anymore… which I thought was a good thing, but now it’s impossible to get him to sleep for a nap unless he has a bottle. Even then, whether or not it happens is a toss-up. I really just don’t know what to do… but he and I neither one are handling this nap shenanigans very well…
Truthfully a 1.5 hour nap at 6 months is celebration worthy. The bottle to sleep however is going to lead you to short nap city. 6 months is a tough age because they’re not really newborns but their not quite “big kids” yet either. Personally if you want longer naps at this age the key elements is going to be:
– putting baby down awake
– same time every day
– solid and soothing pre-nap routine
– as much nap soothing as possible (whitenoise, dark room, swaddle)
Honestly naps are a complex beast. I’ve been working on the nap chapter (yes yes I know I keep talking about my book) for AGES and it’s HUGE. Because naps are complex!
for the older kids — no one tells you that when your child drops naps altogether they can go to sleep earlier!! yay for evenings with your spouse again! (although in the early stage of no nap, those few hours before bedtime can be pretty ugly.) my son’s pre-school enforces naps till age 5 and he just will NOT fall asleep till 9 pm on school nights. i love the weekends of no nap and early bedtime.
I just did! 😉 And right there with you for “adult time!”
PS. It is BRUTAL to force naps for kids till 5. No wonder he’s up till 9! Yikes. My 4 YO would be up till 10 if we forced naps (although I miss that time dearly). Yowza!
Alexis,
My little boy is now 8 months old and finally going down to sleep night by himself (we ended up doing a sort of cry if out where I sat in the room as he cried for a night or two to help him learn how to fall asleep by himself – remarkably painlessly for all involved after the first horrible night) Anyway, now he is sleeping so much better at night and I’m approaching the point where I no longer need to nap when he does, how do I get him to fall asleep himself during the day time rather than snuggled up in bed with me? . I dream of being able to lie him in his cot, say night night my love and walk out of the room to get some previously neglected work done… Any genius solutions?
Hey Annie O (is that short for Oakley 😉
Getting him to sleep for naps is a complex issue (hence why the nap chapter is going to be ginormous). The good news is if you’re snuggling with him you could potentially gently wean out of it. Each day you put a tiny bit of space between yourself and him. Next day 1 inch. Next day 2 inches. Etc. You’re literally moving away by inches. This takes ages but can be really effective as long as you’re consistent – once you’ve put X amount of space in there you don’t go back.
If you want him in the crib at some point he’s in the crib and you’re next to him – maybe holding his hand through the slots. Then your hand is next to his in the crib. Then you’re nearby but not in the crib. Then each day you’re progressively a little bit closer to the door.
Patience and consistency are your key success factors here. And time. And maybe wine 😉
In the same boat as many of you. Would love some words of wisdom.
Our nearly 11-month-old has been bucking naps for the past month.
She had colic (only during the day! – cried from 5am – 10pm) until 4 months but has always been a solid night sleeper, dropping to one feeding at 3am around 6 months & then STTN 11+ hours around 8 months. For that I am GRATEFUL. But at the same time, her naps have been a continuous struggle. She fights every one of them – at least 10-15 minutes of fussing / sometimes more like 30-40 minutes before she settles and then sleeps at MOST 1.5 hrs but more like 1 hr if we’re lucky.
Between 7-10 months her schedule was wake between 6-7am nap @ 9:30am (I would wake her up after an hour) and then nap #2 around 2pm (hour, 1.5 hrs if lucky) bedtime between 7 – 8.
NOW she either doesn’t take the morning nap, takes a 30 minute morning nap, doesn’t take the afternoon nap, or takes a 30 minute afternoon nap and she’s started waking up at 6am.
Seems like we are ready to transition, no? I’ve read all the books & I am so scared of transitioning too early, so we keep plugging away at the 2 nap schedule but it continues to be a fight.
The few times we tried a 1 nap schedule she does fine staying awake until noon & then sleeps for 1.5 hours – 2 hours but keeping her awake until 7 is difficult. It’s hard to put her down much earlier for bed tho with our work schedules.
On the third day of the one nap schedule she only took a 40 minute nap & was a mess. So we went back to 2 bad naps.
Writing this out has made me realize we should give it another go. How long do we test out the new schedule before deciding it’s not working? The last time I got so nervous we were making her over-tired, but I think if we had stuck with it a bit longer she may have adjusted.
Thanks!
What about alternating – one day 2 naps, one day 1 nap, repeat? Sometimes (especially as she’s young) she may need to do an on again/off again schedule for a while, especially if she struggles to actually fall asleep.
I know everybody talks about consistency and sleep but I’m suggesting that for a while, INconsistency might be the answer. Good luck!
Thanks for the reply, Alexis. The every-other-day schedule worked for a few weeks. But then on the two-nap days we would wake her after an hour (usually around 10:30/11am) and then she would completely refuse the second nap – so that was awful.
We are currently on day 10 of a 1-nap transition attempt. She’s napping most days for 1.5-2 hours but her night sleep has gone wonky, waking usually between 3am-5am, although it is gradually getting later & later so I’m hoping she’s still adjusting. We’ll see…
Thanks for the timely-as-ever post, Alexis! My 17-month-old son has recently begun taking a 2-hour morning nap and then not sleeping at all for his afternoon nap, so I’m thinking he’s ready to become a one-nap kid. I’m going to start waking him after 1 hour in the morning to hopefully bring back afternoon nap, but my issue is that my daughter gets out of school at 12:30p. So once we get to one nap, I’d either have to put him down and then leave him alone for ~45 minutes for school pick-up (not ideal!), or keep him awake until 1pm when we get back home. I’m not sure I’m sufficiently distracting to keep my 10am napper awake for three extra hours! Do you think the shortened morning nap + (hopeful) afternoon nap schedule will work for 4 months, until school’s out and I could begin a one-nap-starting-around-noon schedule? Or is that plan doomed and I should try something else? Thanks!
When you have older siblings you have to do what you have to do right?
Clearly he can’t be left alone for an hour so definitely push the short AM nap routine and see how that goes. If you have no success you’re right- he’s going to fall asleep in the car on the way to get your daughter which means car naps (and no break!) for you.
Do I think it will work? Who knows. But I know you guys will figure out a way to make it till summer 😉
Thanks, Alexis! The plan has definitely failed so far – the one time he did fall asleep in the afternoon it was so late that it messed up bedtime, and the other days he just refuses to sleep again despite being very obviously tired. I’m going to cut morning nap back to 30 minutes and see if that works, and if not, I’ll resign myself to 5:30am wake-ups until June. Alas, c’est la vie!
Funny enough, i have a complete opposite problem. My 24-month old has successfully and without much fuss transitioned to 1 nap 8 months ago. But recently i noticed that in the evening he is very tired in the daycare. Before when i picked him up around 6pm he’d be running around with the other children, now i often find him lying on the carpet in the middle of the room… very sad…
he normally sleeps 8pm-appr 6am, and he needs a lot of extra soothing after 5-5.30am, often requiring us to hold him to make him get more sleep. and he would normally have a good 2hour nap at 12-2pm. This past weekend he was so irritable by 9am that i took him to his room to calm him down, and he fell asleep… he slept 1 hour, then i put him again to bed at 2.30pm and he slept 1.5 hours. and then went to bed at his usual time at 8pm without fuss… this is completely like his schedule 8 months ago.
what could it be? at first i suspected being tired due to teething, but he sleeps well at night. so i am completely lost trying to figure it out. anyone has a clue? Thanks
Honestly I would make his bedtime earlier. Working parents never like this advice, “But I never get to hang out with him!” This is true. But I think for whatever reason he needs more sleep. His nights are a scant 10 hours which is a bit on the short side. Daycare is VERY stimulating for kids. He’s telling you he needs more sleep and most kids won’t sleep in even if they need to. Try 7:30 or even 7 for a week and see what happens.
Thank you Alexis, right on the spot as usual.
I put him to bed 30 minutes earlier, and my baby slept 7.30pm-6.30am. fantastic!
will keep doing this now. it means rushing his evening routine a little bit (feeding, undressing, washing, brushing teeth and reading 2 books to a 2yo in one hour is a sprint pace!), but it’s worth it! he was even more cooperative than usual when getting ready for bed, i guess because he was less tired.
Thank you!
Hi Alexis,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, insights and humor! I appreciate your website tremendously and have been successful in our cry it out and are all getting better sleep thanks to your help. My daughter has recently dropped her third nap. She is almost nine months old. Our bedtime is 6:30-6:45 and she wakes around 7. She had her first night of no wake ups the other night, but is usually one feeding around 4am. Her first nap is around 9-9:30 and she sleeps at least an hour, usually 1 1/2hrs. Next nap is around 2:30 – sometimes I have to wake her from this one because if it goes past 3:30 she struggles more at bedtime. Now, my question is that her naps are still about 10-15minutes of crying. I’ve tried moving her to earlier times and later times, but there seems to be no end to her crying for a while before napping. Is she just a kid that needs a few tears to sleep? Bedtime, she maybe fusses a minute, but that rare, usually just tosses until she’s comfy and falls asleep without a peep.
Yes. 10 minutes is her “I don’t want to nap I want to play with YOU!” Some kids are like that. Probably most even. My 4 YO tells me every night that he’s not tired and doesn’t want to sleep. 5 minutes later he’s out. She doesn’t have words yet so she cries for 10 minutes. And she’s sleeping FANTASTICALLY so don’t change a thing – you are clearly rocking it!
Hello! I love your site and especially your blogs on naps & sleep. My 6.5 month has 2 teeth sprouting and his normal great naps- 3 per day – morning one is 1 hour, middle about 1.5 hour if lucky and then last one is only 40 mins. He used to have a good 2 hour one and they all keep getting shorter…is that normal. Also, his sleep habits at night since teething have been awful. He’s waking 2-3 times and won’t settle unless I feed him, which I’m worried about creating bad habits of feeding him to go back to bed. However, I have let him CIO for 30 minutes and it just doesn’t work unless I feed him. Is it ok to feed him during this teething time or just not a good idea? Thank you so much!
Teething will get you shorter naps but honestly your peanut is getting 3+ hours of day sleep which is actually awesome. I think it’s likely that as he’s getting older he doesn’t need any more than 3 (and remember, 3 is GREAT!).
Are you feeding him AT bedtime? Check post below – it might be helpful. It’s not a problem to be generous with feeding while he’s teething but it can turn into one. Meaning now it’s a habit/sleep association and even when the teeth pop through you’re now eating 2-3 times a night. Personally I’m a fan of medicating my way out of teething but if that doesn’t suit keep nursing. Just be mindful to separate nursing from bedtime so that he doesn’t associate the two.
Cheers!
Alexis
Thanks Alexis! Really appreciate your feedback and advice. Happy to hear that my LO is actually getting good naps and enough sleep during the day. I hear you on the sleep association and that is what worries me. I do feed him at bedtime 5:30ish- bath, then feed, but put in the crib awake. Should I change this? I’m a fan of medicating as well, so possibly I should be giving him medicine in the middle of the night to avoid nursing. I’m going to read your post now! Thanks again.
Hey Alexis!
It’s me…AGAIN…
So my LO now 17m dropped to 1 nap about 2 months ago or so…she only naps in the morn from about 11-12.30 or 1pm. So on average 1.5-2hrs. She does a morning nap because she wakes up so bloody early (keep reading)…this is ok right? How much awake time should she have at this age? People keep saying don’t let her sleep in the afternoon, tire her out so she’ll sleep all night. Yeah right? Have they met my kid? Granted, around 14m she would usually make up sleep based on how long she was awake so that technique worked. But that rainbow was short lived.
So the THING is…The kid still won’t sleep through the night!She goes down anywhere between 7-8pm, often 7.30ish. We’ll do 6.30 or 7p if she wakes from her nap early. The past 2wks or so she’s been getting up close to 4x! I know…you should see the bags under my eyes. She’s had one little tooth sprout in that time period and at present her bottom gum is a bit swollen so I’m suspecting molars are pushing through?
The result: Co-sleeping. And what a nightmare it’s been because she wiggles around and wakes herself crying like she’s having a bad dream when its actually me having the bad dream!
Hubs puts her down solo (often falls asleep while drinking the bottle, which honestly I was thinking is the culprit causing all this waking-could it be?), and she would wake an hr later, 2hrs later, around 1a and then clockwork at 4/4.30! I was starting to lose my mind esp. that I get home after 11 and don’t fall asleep till 12a, if I’m lucky.
The past few days she’s been (night)waking around 11 or 12am then around 4 or 5am, and screaming bloody murder unless she has another drink of milk. And this kid polishes off about 6ounces during the first waking and then gets up less than 4hrs for another? (I give her 4ounces if she gets up again coz mummy don’t play ‘dat) Yest, she only woke once which was a bloody miracle.
Her day starts just before 6 or a bit after(did I mention my bags already?) She has not done a 7am wake up in like a month! On average her sleep is about 10hrs on a good night, 9 on a bad. I’m worried this could affect her growth. Could it?
Oh did I mention she stays up for about 30m-an hr just wiggling around in bed with us? Mostly after the 4am feed. I completely ignore her of course and she falls asleep on her own. So she starts in her crib and after the first wake she’s with us.
When does the hurting stop?
Can’t wait for your book!
Thanks!
Chanda.
Hey Chanda,
Oh my. My oh my. So. Much. Here.
Start here: “often falls asleep while drinking the bottle, which honestly I was thinking is the culprit causing all this waking-could it be?”
THIS is definitely A if not THE core issue. It sounds like she’s not falling asleep on her own (is she?) and she’s definitely falling asleep with a bottle. She’s old enough to not need this anymore AND it’s setting you up for multiple night wakings. I’m betting that this, far more than the teething, is the root if all your night challenges.
(Also I can’t believe you work till 11 PM – I’m getting sympathy exhaustion just considering what that must be like.)
Also, don’t co-sleep if you don’t want to. Frankly it doesn’t sound like it’s solving anything (is it?) and it’s hard to get out of. So don’t make it a habit if you aren’t happy with the situation. Also if you change up what is happening AT bedtime you’ll create a foundation for her to sleep better AT night. Honest (see post below for more).
Don’t worry about her growth – she’ll keep growing. Promise. But I am worried about YOU. She’s not a newborn anymore. She doesn’t need a bottle AT bedtime nor during the night. You work means you can’t sleep prior to midnight so you just can’t keep up this “up all night” stuff because you’re never sleeping. Change bedtime. No bottles. Honest. This is the key.
Oh! Oh! And how do I get her to nap on her own in the day???? We currently put her on our backs traditional style: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-carry-your-baby-African-style/
But she’s gotten pretty heavy and I just think it’s time for her to learn to do daytime naps on her own.
Any advice?
Ooof. That is a big topic – probably bigger than I can address here but OF COURSE you need her off your back. I mean she’s going to be napping for 2 more years, are you going to wear her every nap for 2 years? Don’t you want a free moment of the day to yourself?
She’s never slept not on your body? Ooof.
Well I guess I would start with trying to get her to sleep next to you in the bed. If you can do that you have a shot to gradually move your body away from hers (literally this is a game of inches) until there is some space between you and her. Then you gradually inch out of the room. Hard but can totally be done.
Otherwise there is nap CIO but that’s often a rough slog for everybody. So an option but not a reliable one.
My daughter will be 12 months in about a week. She is the queen of the 37 minute nap. She dropped her 3rd nap months ago and lately, she has sometimes been only napping once! I can’t figure out the conditions for her napping once or twice! Also, no matter if she naps once or twice, the length is super variable. It will either be almost 2 hours (joy joy!), 45 minutes, or 37 minutes. Is there any rhyme or reason to this?
For her bedtime, she goes to sleep on her own in her crib around 6:30pm. She used to sleep straight until about 6:30am. About 2 months ago (of and on) she now wakes up around 4 or 5 to nurse! Any ideas about what’s going on? Thanks so much!
Sorry! Also, when she does only take one nap, it tends to be one around 9 or 10am. And when she does wake up at 4 or 5am, after I nurse her, she sometimes goes back to sleep until 7 or 8, and then sometimes goes back to sleep until 6, and then sometimes just wakes up! This last option is more typical for the 5am feed than for the 4am feed.
Thank you!
Hey Jenn,
Well for starters lots of kiddos go through a brief regression around their 1st birthday. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Here’s some crappy sleep for you – WOOT!
At 1 year you really want her napping at the same time every day. Is that happening? I can’t promise it’ll fix everything, but it’ll help. ALso is she falling asleep on her own? That ALSO will help. Those two things are the post powerful tools in your toolkit at this age.
Also I would tend to push for 2 naps if you can. Maybe the 2nd nap is a stroller nap? I’m guessing she still needs 2 especially if they’re only 37 minutes long.
I know – not the magic juju you were hoping for. Good luck!
Thanks so much, Alexis. She does go to sleep on her own, but she doesn’t always have a schedule for naps. What are the times I should shoot for if she takes two naps? 10am and 2pm?
Alexis,
I have a 7mo that was a good napper. Two 1.5 naps in the am, one cat nap in the pm, in bed by 6:30-7ish. Now, everything is upside down. She takes one good 1.5-2hr nap in the am. Then, however, no matter how hard I try, she only takes a short nap (OR NO NAP AT ALL after that one) until bedtime. The reason this is a big deal to me is that this usually means she’s awake anywhere from 11am-2pm all the way to bedtime. So she’s awake 4-7hrs! By bedtime, she is a huge, cranky mess which shows me that really needed that second nap (or needed a longer one). I have tried
e v e r y t h i n g (white noise, lovey, pacifier, going for a drive, breaking out the swing again, sleeping next to her, etc) to get her to take a better second nap, but its just now working.
Please tell me she isnt down to ONE nap at 7mo!! What am I doing wrong?
Correction: Just *NOT working
So this is fun! My twelve month old daughter has been taking great naps but the last week we have suddenly decided to have great AM naps (9:30 a.m. like clockwork) and our afternoon nap (2:30 p.m.) – not so much.
Is it normal for kids to drop the afternoon nap? I keep seeing all these moms whose kids have dropped the AM nap. I have yet to know one who drops the afternoon. She sleeps great at night with only occasional wake ups. Ideas? I do know that wine works…for adults.
You’re definitely not alone, Paula! My son’s morning nap has always been better/longer/more reliable than his afternoon one, and now that he’s 17 months and ready for only one nap, it’s the morning one that he really wants to keep, it seems. I’m trying cutting his morning nap short (waking him after one hour) to bring afternoon nap back, but five days in we’ve had no luck (he either still won’t sleep in the afternoon although he’s clearly tired, or he falls asleep so late that it messes up bedtime). Sorry, no ideas from me but plenty of sympathy!
It’s normal for them to have more trouble with the afternoon nap than the morning nap – at least, my daughter did. 12 months is on the early side for transitioning to 1 nap, so make sure it’s not just a phase (my daughter went through a couple of phases of teasing us with that 2nd nap before we decided to transition to 1 at 14 months). What we did was to push her morning nap later in the day by 15 minute increments (more or less, depending on how the morning went) and soon that nap was toward the middle of the day – we kept it at around 12 for a while and it eventually made its way to 1 or 1:30 (and now at almost age 2, she is struggling with napping at all … but we had a decent several months in there….) At some point in there we also shifted lunch before the nap instead of after.
It was scary to do that because it seemed like the morning nap was always a given, but it was necessary because it just seemed like 2 naps were no longer going to happen and we needed to take the plunge and shift it to midday.
Hi Alexis,
Thank you for another great post! My almost 7 month baby has started lengthening his naps (alleluia!). But I have this challenge. When he has longer morning or/and afternoon naps, his 3rd nap falls after 5pm which I consider late and if put down will mess his 19-19:30 bedtime. Should I put him down anyway and have a later bedtime or should I skip the 3rd nap and put him down a bit earlier (I can’t put him down too early as then he will miss a feeding). For example yesterday he slept 12 hours and 15 minutes straight at night, had a morning nap of 1 h and 10 minutes and an afternoon nap of 1,5 hours which ended at 14:45. His 3rd nap would be around 17:15 as after noon he can stay up for approximately 2-3 hours. I decided to keep him up but he got really tired around 18:00. Needless to say that he was so tired anyway that he barely drank any milk (he is also teething so bottle is not his favourite), slept from 19:00 till 5am, woke up because he was hungry, had a feeding and then slept until 7:45. It seems that either way his schedule will be messed up (and I though longer naps would be great!!). Any ideas?
Thanks again
Thomai
Hey Thomai,
If he’s 7 months and waking up at ~3 PM he probably needs a mini cat nap to make it to bedtime. I would do a quickie 10-15 minute nap (in the stroller?) in the afternoon to take the edge off. But not so long that he is blowing his bedtime. Because at this age you really want to have a more consistent bedtime so better to lock that in than have it floating about due to nap issues. Sound cool?
Cheers,
Alexis
Mini nap it is then!! Thank you so much!
I can’t wait to read your 10,000-words book chapter on naps 🙂
Hi Alexis,
My baby is 10 months old, and is a good night sleeper (he sleeps from around 7pm-5 am most days, sometimes 6am if I am lucky) but we really battle in the day. When I initially did the sleep training at around 6.5 months he used to have the right no of naps at a good length (around 1-1.5hours) but in the last month or so, he falls asleep fine, when put down after a few mins of squealing, but he wakes up screaming btw 35min-45min later and it doesnt help to let him cry because he can go up to 30 min. Im not sure what I am doing wrong, he knows how to fall asleep by himself, and he is still so tired. I think I am giving him the right no of naps (2) with a 3.5 hour wake time. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks very much, I am a South African, I really enjoy reading your posts, and have been following your advice from the time my baby was quite little.
Sameera (lovely name BTW) I think the issue is with the nap schedule. 3.5 hours awake is a long time for an ~11 month old. Many people at this age have success with the 2:3:4 schedule. So 2 hours after he wakes up its time for nap #1. If he wakes at 5 that means nap number 1 is at 7 AM (8 is better if you can push it). Then nap #2 comes 3 hours later (so maybe noon) for you. Then he might need a brief catnap (in the stroller maybe?) at say 3/4 – just enough to take the edge off for bedtime.
Not sure if that works for you but I think earlier time between naps in the AM, later in the PM is definitely going to lead you to a happier naptime. Good luck!
Cheers,
Alexis
Hi Alexis,
Thanks so much for replying. I will definitely try as you have suggested and maybe use 2.5-3 hours as a wake time as after 2 hours he doesnt show any signs of sleepiness (eye rubs, yawns, general crankiness). Is it ok to use these signs to put baby down?
Other problem I have is that he only sleeps well in his cot, wont fall asleep on his own in a stroller/car seat and if he does, he wakes up crying because he can’t move around.
Is there any way to stop a baby moving around so much in its sleep?
Swaddling is about it. Some kiddos have a hard time monkeying about in a sleep sack. So if he’s too old for swaddling you could try that. But if it’s possible, definitely swaddle!
Hi Alexis
Can you please help me?! My son is 17 months and for the last few weeks he’s been boycotting his cot for naps. He’s still having two naps a day and I don’t THINK he’s ready to drop to one. He’s napped great in his cot from about 6 months old until recently. He will sleep in his pushchair if I go out for a walk and has 40 mins ish in a morning unless I rock the pushchair until he goes back to sleep (which I do) and then he has about an hour. He has about an hour to an hour and a half in the afternoon and generally doesn’t need rocking for his one. He’s occasionally been an early waker but lately it’s more often than not and 5/5.30 is too early! He will not go back to sleep even if we let him cry a bit. Have I made this worse by not forcing the cot for naps?? I do try to let him cry it out but he always defeates me. He goes to bed at 7 pm easily and puts himself to sleep. He has a dummy and a comforter but he has lots of dummies in bed with him so can always find one. If he wakes early he’s ready for sleep again by half 9. He wakes sobbing and I know he’s not done with sleep. What am I doing wrong??
Thank you in advance. X
Hey Kirsty,
I think that absolutely sounds like he’s dropping a nap! Essentially dropping a nap is a decrease in the amount of sleep needed throughout the day. You can keep him napping in the morning by going for a walk. But his body is needing less sleep so it’s “loosing” the sleep instead by waking up too early.
Honestly I know it’s scary to let go of 2X naps but I thin it’s time. I think if you switch to 1 nap for 1-2 weeks you’ll see his morning wake time shift back to what it was.
Try it out and let me know what happens – OK?
Hi Alexis
I just wanted to give you an update and anyone looking for confirmation that you are always right! Firstly THANK YOU!!! I needed a massive kick up the bum to do the one nap thing and it’s worked a treat. I honestly couldn’t see the woods for the trees but he so needed to be on one nap. Watching him this week I’m thinking “how did I think he needed so much day time sleep?”. The first morning was a 6 am (I’m more than happy with that!) but the second was a 5 am. I didn’t panic and every morning the rest of the week has been 6/6.30. But more importantly than that (kind of!) is that his behaviour has changed. He was screaming after the afternoon nap, being incredibly angry with lots of throwing himself around and quite often refusing dinner. All that’s stopped. We’re going through a hitting phase and although it’s still happening I think it’s a little better. He’s also learnt to walk this week which has helped on the frustration front.
He’s going down for the nap at about 11.30, which I’m hoping will become after lunch at some point, and having about an hour to an hour and a half. He’s still sleeping in his pushchair – I tried a cot nap and gave up. But one battle at a time and if he’s sleeping 11/11 and a half hours at night does it really matter if the nap is in the pushchair? I don’t know to be honest. Maybe it will when this next baby arrives in a few months. We’ve gone out twice this week in the car in the morning which has been unavoidable and he’s fell asleep for 10 minutes but has been ok and then just had his sleep a bit later. So all in all I’m happy. More than happy, I’m over the moon! So again thank you so so much.
Kirsty x
Just an update – I decided to give a cot nap a go this afternoon. I’ve been out this morning and he’s had half an hour in the car which ended at 10 am. At 2 pm I put him down and with a few tears he went. However 45 mins later he was awake and sobbing. I left him for 5 mins or so and went in to soothe him. He had a dummy and his comforter put was very upset when I went to leave so I caved and brought him to his pushchair. Two minutes of rocking and he’s fast asleep again. So is it an issue of being unable to self soothe now??? If so, why??!! Can he only do it when completely knackered and not just tired? I just don’t know what to do and feel like I’ve lost my way a bit (implies I had found my way before, hmmm not sure!). I know that 11 hours sleep a night is amazing and lots of ladies would eat their arm off to have this. I’m 19 weeks pg and knackered and would love to have a regular 6 – 6.30 am start which is his norm!
Hmmm…I think he’s developed a motion=sleep association. So in his brain he can only sleep if moving. You either need to break out of that habit (gradually rock less, less, less till no more) or invest in a LARGE SWING.
😉
Sorry to become a serial poster all of a sudden but he’s still asleep in his pushchair which makes his sleep 2 hours and counting (including the mini sobbing break). I’ve been waking him if he’s still asleep at this time as I don’t want it to interfere with bedtime but I’m leaving him today because nothing else is working. I’m going to try a later bedtime instead. Am I doing the right thing? Is his showing signs of wanting to drop to one nap? But if he is then how do I get him to stay awake longer in the morning as he is shattered pretty quick and obviously wanting to sleep. Thanks again!
Hi Alexis,
I’m currently working on nap training my 12 month old (he just successfully bedtime trained last month). My issue is that the little guy poops conveniently while trying to go down for a nap. I know because I hear him on the monitor. When I go in his room to confirm he’s finally asleep, it smells like poop 🙁 It currently takes him about 40 minutes to fall asleep for naps with the training we’re doing. Is it worth going in to his room, changing he poop diaper, and risking throwing off all the progress he’s made during that episode?
Hey Alexis,
Thanks for the write up. My son is 2years and 2 months and he doesn’t like taking naps anymore. He doesn’t like to sleep in the bed during the day, but when we have a feeling that he is tired (after a restless night), then we typically put him in his car seat and then drive him around. I know it’s a temporary solution to the problem, but I guess we can do it until he is big enough were he doesn’t need to take a nap. Thanks again, I’ll be practicing the rest of the tips when he gets older.
Hi Alexis! Love your site & can’t wait for your book 🙂
My 10 1/2 month old daughter is an awesome night sleeper (7pm-7am), but is a terrible napper! She takes 2 naps a day, but they are only about 30-40 minutes each 🙁
For her naps, she sleeps in her crib in her sleep sack with her white noise machine. She also now falls asleep on her own (I used to bounce her to sleep). She might fuss for a few minutes, but she falls asleep pretty quickly, thank goodness!
I thought once she learned how to fall asleep on her own for naps, she would sleep longer. But that hasn’t happened yet 🙁 She seems unable to sleep longer than one sleep cycle, and then she wakes up screaming!!!
Any suggestions on how to lengthen naps, even just to 50-60 minutes each? Thanks sooo much!! 🙂
Alexis, thank you so much for replying. You’re right I know – it’s time for one nap. And it is scary!! It’s getting through that morning bit when he’s getting a bit tired and mardy. Thank god the sun is finally starting to make an appearance so a few trips to the park I think! He started walking this weekend too which gives him something new to do! I’m going to take a deep breath and tackle it from now. It was another 5.20 wake up this morning so I’m tired and mardy too – which will hopefully make me more determined! And you made me laugh about the swing! I used the swing a lot when he was little as you saved my sanity on more than one occasion when I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t following the schedule the books said he should! At 2 stone now I think I’d need an industrial one! But the swing is in the loft ready for baby number two. Thanks again, it means a lot that you’ve taken the time to reply. X
HI
My son is 2 and naps during the day for usually 3 hours. He has always been a fairly good napper. We don’t struggle getting him to sleep and he is fairly conistent with the 2.5 to 3 hours but now I am wondering if it is starting to affect his nightime sleep. He is going to bed at the same time just before 8 but many nights he doesn’t fall asleep til close to 9 or after 9 and is up early anywhere between 5 and 6. He has always woken up that early but usually he fell asleep right after we put him down. I can’t change the time he goes for his nap (noon til 3) as he is at a dayhome and noon is naptime there. I am wondering if I should have them wake up him after 2 hours or just let him sleep and ride it out till he starts waking up earlier himself? Some mornings he is cranky but for the most part he is good. I just want to make sure he is getting enough sleep, I know 8-9 hours is less than the recommended amount at night.
First of all, your web site is the only reason why I haven’t gone off the no-sleep-deep-end since the time my son was born–THANK YOU!!! He is now a busy 2.5 year old, and up until the last couple weeks he would sleep for 90-180 minutes. Now? It’s like laying down gives him his second wind, and he absolutely will. not. sleep. I feel like he is still too young too be giving up a nap all together. I will at least lay down with him for an hour and tell him he doesn’t need to sleep but he needs to lay down and be quiet, and he usually does rest some. On the plus side, he is sort of a dream to put to bed at night. This ALMOST makes not napping totally worth it. But there are still days that he is completely beside himself by dinner time because he is so over tired, and the fact that if we were in the car during the afternoon, he would definitely fall asleep for a long nap. This tells me he still needs a nap, but I feel like I am fighting a losing battle here. Any thoughts?
Hi Alexis,
My daughter is almost 11.5 months old and the last couple of weeks she’s started giving me some trouble with her second nap. Before her schedule looked something like this: up at 7 am, nap 1 from 9 – 11:30, nap 2 from 2:30- 3:30, bed at 7 pm. Now some days she will still have both her naps just fine, other days nap one goes well and nap two she can spend upwards of 1.5 hours in her crib alternating between sitting, laying down, sitting back up, etc. She MAY fall asleep briefly when she lays down (she can be laying down between 5-20 min stretches and is pretty still) but I can’t be sure. Usually she doesn’t cry while she’s there until the end but some days she wont even get that quiet time. She might spend 30 min in her crib trying to go to sleep and then start crying and will not calm down until you get her out.
I feel like she’s too young to give up her second nap especially because she can’t seem to stay up too long in the mornings (3 hours would be her max and then she gets pretty fussy) so if her first nap is happening in the mornings and her second nap isn’t happening, she’s up for 7+ hours before bed. Even though she’s been ok in the evenings even on these days that is just way too long in my opinion.
Should I just keep trying to get her to take the second nap? Or should I switch her to one nap and somehow try to move her morning nap closer to noon?
Alexis, heeeeelllllpppppp!!!!!! I posted a little while back asking about my now 18 month old boy and you made the right suggestion of dropping him to one nap. However he’s back to 5/5.30 wakings! Why??????!!!!! It all went great but now they’re back and I don’t know why or what to do. He’s having about an hour to an hour and a half which is usually around 11.30. It’s still in the pushchair as he’s still boycotting the cot. Bedtime is between half 6 and 7. What am I doing wrong? I’d love your advice when you have the time. Thank you. X
Hey Kirsty,
Well for starters I wouldn’t assume you are doing something wrong. If he happily goes to bed at 6 and sleeps till 5/5:30 that’s an 11/11.5 hour night which is awesome. (for more on this see post I linked to below).
I know 5:30 doesn’t feel awesome. But this is life with kids. I am a night owl and getting up early goes against every fiber of my being. But I had children so…there it is.
If you absolutely hate it you can TRY (note I’m not promising success here!) tweaking his schedule. Gradually push naptime back a bit to maybe 12:30 (this is an experiment to see what works). See if that doesn’t enable you to push bedtime back to 7:30 is. If you do this there is a chance he’ll shift his 11.5 hours of sleep out and you’ll all get to sleep in till 6:30.
There is also however a good chance he’ll continue to wake up at 5:00 AM in which case OK – you experimented a little and learned that it’s not working so back to the 6 PM bedtime you go!
Thanks so much for coming back to me Alexis! Bedtime is generally 7 pm so he’s having around 10 and a bit hours roughly – I know it’s amazing to lots of parents and I am grateful but he wakes crying at this time and when he sleeps until 6/6.30 he wakes happy so I THINK it’s not enough for him. Which is what makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong! But you’re right, this is the nature of the beast and I know I have an early riser rather than a night owl. I’ve tried the odd later night but he wakes at the same time – but I’ve only tried it once and then gone back to earlier rather than trying a few nights on the trot. Maybe I should try a few. My gut feeling is that he’ll do better going down a bit before 7 (which is what I occasionally do) so that, as you say, when he wakes at half 5 he’s had more sleep. And as my friend said the other day ‘do you really want to get used to sleeping later when you have a new baby coming?’ which is true!!! Sleeping sometimes feels like a maths problem that just needs solving and it kills me that I can’t figure out the answer. Control freak clearly!! Thanks so much again, it helps to hear that I’m maybe not doing something wrong and this could just be how it is. X
My kids have all been great nappers (I have 5) and when they transition away from naps I do quiet time instead where I read a book to them in their beds and then they stay and look at books until quiet time is over. On tired days they fall asleep for a little nap when they need it, but don’t fight a nap because they don’t have to take a nap. I still do this during the summer when my elementary age kids are home. They all do quiet time while the baby and toddler are napping. And it has made my kids all great readers.
My baby is one of those rare babies who dropped to one nap right before her first birthday. She has always been a great sleeper but terrible napper. She went from 3 naps to 2 naps at exactly 6 months, even though the norm is anywhere from 6-9 months. Then at about 11 months, she seemed to go through a regression where she would only take her morning nap and then in the afternoon, she’d kick and toss and turn for an hour and not nap, and then go to bed at about 7pm (we had a few night wakings during this time as well). I even tried shortening her morning nap to 30 minutes but the second nap still didn’t happen, which made for really really crappy days. I fought that for about 3 weeks before I decided to let her stay up longer in the mornings, then let her nap as long as she wanted to at about 11am and skip the last nap, just to see what would happened. Lo and behold, she’d nap close to two hours (she was only doing about 2.5 hours total when napping twice a day) in one nap. Ever since then (she’s now almost 14 months), she’s been on one nap with just 3-4 days when she had two naps at the grandparents, but that hasn’t happened in at least 3-4 weeks now.
The timing of this post could not be more appropriate for us. I have been wondering for a few weeks now if my 14 month old is transitioning from one to two naps…maybe he’s not and I’m just looking for problems, but another opinion would be super helpful.
Right now, his schedule is like this:
7:00/7:15 am wake up
7:30 breakfast
9:30/10:00 first nap (2 hours)
12:00 lunch
3:00/3:30 second nap (1.5-2 hours)
6:00 dinner
8:00/8:15 bed
We really want to keep a later bed time since my husband and I don’t get home from work until 6 pm most days. If it was any earlier, we’d never see him during the week and that’s just not an option.
Baby Boy is (now) a fantastic napper and loves his naps. He also goes down for the night pretty easily. However, the reason I think he’s transitioning is that he is taking longer to fall asleep for the second nap and at bed time. He doesn’t fuss or anything, he just kind of rolls around and talks to his lovey for a while–sometimes for up to an hour at bed time.
Thoughts? If he’s close to dropping that second nap, I’d love some advise on a transitional schedule–I’m clueless.
I need help with the=is as well. My 8 month old is giving us a time with her naps. I know there are a lot of factors going on here (she just got her first two teeth and is still teething as the top two are trying to come through, she is learning how to pull up and walk with support, rolling more and trying to crawl, etc.) but our afternoons are a struggle at this point. Until now she has had 3-4 naps per day (four if two of them were short) and now she will wake up around 8, nap from about 9:30-10:30 and then not want to sleep again until 6:00pm when she crashes for four to five hours and then gets me up from bed at 12 or 1 to nurse! Today I put her down at 10am trying to prolong the morning nap and she didn’t sleep til 11 after crib time, a dirty diaper change, and more crib time. Should I try to keep her up til 11? I am all for going to two longer naps a day but just not sure what times to do naps and bedtime now for her. I am going to do trial and error of course but any tips are much appreciated!
This sounds exactly like us. Almost 8 mo, went from 4 naps to 3 just recently. I was in heaven for like two weeks and now KABLAM she’s refusing naps (take your pick which one) and CRASHING at 6:24 every night. She falls asleep on her own every.single.time. so I know it’s not a bad sleep association. She is learning to sit up, crawl, and cruise all at the same time. My theory:. she just can’t shut down. She never misses the first nap of the day, but after that, I think she’s just too active to go down until she’s exhausted. It sucks, but I am hoping it’s just a phase and she will either return to 3 naps a day or 2 soon.
Good luck.
My about-to-be-6-month-old is currently in the crib hollering at me for the second day in a row of terrible naps, basically refusing to nap since he woke from 30-minute crap nap #3 at 1:40 this afternoon. Since we do the “no more than two hours awake” rule, this is clearly outside of the box of joyous sleep I have been in for some time now. We did bed an hour earlier last night to compensate as best we could, but he woke off and on all night. What to do, what to do… Help!
By about 6 months, baby should probably be awake for closer to 2.5 hours at a time. If mine hasn’t had enough awake time, she won’t nap very long and she’ll fight each one. Try to extend waketime and see what happens!
I was under the impression that to go longer awake, he needed to sleep longer when he slept…and also to be able to go longer between eating. We are still on 3-hr rotation (I use the EASY schedule, quite happily) so if I lengthen awake time, there is a nap happening right when he’s due to eat again. In a pickle. Example: 930 am eat, awake 2.5 hours, nap at 12…that leaves us 30 minutes from eating, which is not a decent nap at all. Plus this kid doesn’t yet have it in him to go four hours between meals. See my issue? Thoughts??
My 6.5 month old definitely can’t go 4 hours either (but with more solids, will be able to soon, I hope!). What I did for a while was feed her right before she went down so her nap wouldn’t be cut short by hunger. It made for a rotating schedule of nursing, but as we’ve both discovered by now, babies grow so fast that they’re always transitioning to a new schedule, and the transition is always awkward! 🙂 So you’d feed him at 9:30, and then 11:45 instead of 12:30. You could wait until 2:45pm to feed again, and that would just be 1 feeding in that awake period.
But I really think a longer waketime will solve the issue!
Thanks, we’ll give it a go.:)
I’m not sure whether my 7.5 month old is ready to drop the 3rd nap or not. She has been unable to sleep longer than 30 minutes for her second and third naps. For her second nap it might be because she is not swaddled (she is swaddled for the other two naps) as we are trying to stop swaddling OR because she can’t fully put herself back to sleep when she wakes at 30 minutes. Although when she is swaddled she puts herself back to sleep when she wakes at the 30 minute mark?! For her third nap she is swaddled but rarely sleeps longer than 30 minutes.
She has always fallen asleep for all naps on her own but only for the last 2 weeks have we been putting her down awake at bedtime, as we are trying to stop early AM wakings (she wakes at 5:30am every morning).
We’ve been fighting the 2nd nap issue for almost two months. Same goes for stopping swaddling (and I was under the impression that stopping swaddling takes a couple weeks at most).
She still gives tired signs which is why I have continued to put her down for her naps on “schedule” but it just seems like she may not be tired enough for those two separate naps in the afternoon.
Thoughts?
Have you read this?
http://www.troublesometots.com/eat-play-sleep-fail/
I know you’re happy with E.A.S.Y. but it could definitely be a factor.
As for how long he’s awake ~2 hours is generally a good target at 6 months, give or take so Janel could be right or you could.
Is he going to sleep on his own? This could also be an object permanence issue. Thoughts?
He goes to bed at night awake, with his lovies…and a pacifier. Yes. I know. We are going to work on that. I do think he just discovered I can leave, and is not pleased. This morning, I have been up with him since 5:15, as he went down last night at 5:30, and that’s 12…so here we are, awake with the chickens. It is becoming a vicious cycle of bad naps, followed by too-early bed, followed by too-early wake, followed by our naps starting to early in the day (7am) followed by bad naps. To break this cycle, what do I do? Normal bedtime? No morning nap after early wake? I see this all going badly, and after a very happy STTN 4.5-5.5 months with decent naps. Boo.
I have been in the same boat for over 5 weeks. I feel like I have tried everything but nothing works as a solution. What happened next with your experience?
So how do you do a 2:3:4 schedule if the naps are craptastic? I’m assuming you really can’t? I wanted to try and follow it with my 8 month old, but his second nap is usually craptastic nap and even if it was an hour (which was rare) he is usually up by 2 and he won’t go to bed at 6 (plus I’m terrified that would end up with a crazy early wake up). Lately his naps have gone down to 20 min (he had usually one hour and a half am nap, a 40 min to hour second nap, and then a 20ish catnap to take the edge off before bed). 9 month sleep regression, pulling himself up, seperation anxiety, he hates me…? I dunno but I’m in the nap underworld at the moment.
I just wanted to say thank you for your amazing website! Every time we are experiencing some kind of new sleep issue you always have clear and simple advice that is actually interesting to read. Thanks!
Hi Alexis,
I hope you can help me with my 13 month old. She is a perpetual catnapper with the very occasional and blissful 50 minute nap. She also wakes pretty early sometime between 5:30-6am. She puts herself to sleep alone in her crib and she sleeps 10-11 hours (put her in around 6:15pm)through the night. I am grateful for those two things! I read your short nap post, and I think the problem may the sleep time bottle of milk. I feed her the entire bottle and take it with me when I leave. Do you have any recommendations for taking this relaxing nap and bedtime ritual away? She is too young to be attached to the bottle, but she is old enough to know that she wants it before she sleeps (she brings me to the bottles when she knows its nap time). I just feel lost and don’t know where to start! Grateful for any thoughts you have. 🙂
So this might to help per se, but my 19 month old was the same type of craptastic cat napper. And then around 14 months we realized that a short nap had become 45 minutes–that used to be his LONGEST nap. Joy! Removing the bottle-sleep association might help–though we didn’t even do that. We did ramp up the nap time routine and made sure he has plenty of time to settle down. Of course now he’s waking up ridiculously early, so we’re trying to figure that out–always a new challenge.
I might be pre-panicking…this could just be a rebellious phase or something, but I’m awfully serious about my kid’s sleep schedule, and I’m scared of the possibility of him dropping his nap. Wanted to see if anybody had any thoughts about current nap shenanigans.
My kid is 2 (26 months). For at least the past year, he’s had the schedule of 7pm to 6am (give or take 15 minutes in either direction on either end) and a midday nap that usually starts around 12:30 and lasts anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 hours (usually on the longer end). Bedtime is bath, toothbrushing, pjs and lotion, books and usually a lullabye or two. Naptime is literally tossing him in the crib with a kiss. I have loved this schedule, he’s done well with it, and I’m lucky he’s a laid back sleeper. Sometimes he’ll have nighttime wakeups that I think are nightmares, so I’ll go in. Otherwise, once he’s down, he’s down (or he’ll wake up and cry for 30 seconds and fall back asleep).
In the past 4 days, he’s dropped 3 naps. 2 on the weekend at home, and 1 at daycare. Not sure what he did during the dropped nap time at daycare, but at home, he just layed in his crib and sang…for 1-1 1/2 hours. So he’s happy and relatively chill, I should be ok with that “quiet time,” right? No. Because he needs the nap. Unsurprisingly, he was demon child all 3 evenings he dropped that day’s nap. Or, rather, alternating demon child with space cadet/yawning child. Kid was a freaking disaster.
I know that some kids drop naps pretty early in life. But it just doesn’t feel like he’s ready to go from 13 hours a day to 11 hours a day of sleep. And there’s not much I could do to give him more time for nighttime sleep…by the time we get home from daycare and fed, we have maybe a half hour “free time” before bedtime routine starts. So I couldn’t really make up the difference there.
So yeah, I don’t know if this is a sleep strategy problem or just a temporary rebellion on his part. To the extent that it requires some sleep strategy changes, anybody have any suggestions? Later bedtime? Later naptime? Longer (more “bedtime-like”) naptime routine?
We’ve had really good luck with our little guy’s naps until a few weeks ago. Now at about 11 months he’s stopped napping for at least one of the naps. Previously he’d consistently do 1.5 hours in the morning and then in the afternoon, but now he just stays awake and babbles through his second nap. Often he’ll be poopy. We go in and change him, try not to interact at all, and put him back down. Today, for instance, we put him down, he was quiet for about 15 minutes, and then started babbling. We waited about 10 minutes to see if he’d quiet down but nope. Went upstairs and sure enough, poppy diaper. He was quiet again for 10 or 15 minutes and now he’s awake and babbling again. He never gets upset; he just babbles. He’s clearly not ready to drop it completely. The poor little guy’s exhausted by bedtime when he missed his nap. But we’re at a loss about what to do. He’s starting at daycare in a month, as well, and we were hoping to have it sorted but i has been a few weeks now and no progress.
Hey Dave,
You can’t make babies eat, sleep, or poop (or not poop as the case may be). This is either:
1) A blip. Ignore it and it’ll pass.
2) A sign that he’s dropping to 1 nap a bit early (the fact that he’s exhausted later does not necessarily disprove this theory)
3) The timing of naps is off and he needs a bit more time between them (possibly also resulting in a slightly later bedtime) until he DOES drop to 1 nap.
It’s delightful that he plays happily on his own! All you can really do is shift bedtime up on days he chooses not to nap. If you give him an opportunity to sleep and he’s been awake long enough to actually be able to FALL asleep, you’ve done all you can do. The rest is up to him!
Hi! I feel like your advice is right where I am. DD played in her crib for an hour before I gave up and brought her out to skip the nap. My issue is that if I put her down early since she missed it, she’s going down too early and fiendishly waking up at 5:30 a.m. Not sustainable. She is completely capable of falling asleep on her own, and I am so tired of fighting for naps every day. But she’s only 8 mo old. Is she really ready for 2 naps?
I’m not sure anyone would still be reading this, but — I would swear my 6-month-old just dropped his second nap. He’s always been a tough sleeper and we had to do SLIP to make him nap at all, but we eventually got to the point where there were two 1.5 hour – 2 hour naps per day. Now that second nap is gone. First it was tough, then it only lasted for 20 minutes, then, for the past week, there’s just no second nap at all. We’ve tried shifting his wake time from 2 hours to 2.5 hours to 3 hours — and in each case, he just lies there and cries for an hour. He shows all the signs of nap dropping on your list, but since he never really took a third or fourth nap to begin with, the only nap he can drop is that second one.
This shouldn’t be possible. Babies are supposed to go down to one nap when they’re toddlers, never this early. But I would swear this one has. Is there some way to bring that second nap back, other than turning it into a mobile catnap?
Honestly I would lean into mobile catnaps temporarily. I’m far more ready to believe this is a blip (regression or what have you) than he’s just fully DONE with it forever. I mean I guess it’s technically possible? But I’m dubious. A few car naps then try again in the crib would be my vote.
Hi! I have an almost 17 month old and we are a few weeks into the 2-1 nap transition. She started really fighting her second nap so we decided it was time. She has always been an early riser – awake around 6 – 630. I keep her up in the morning until noon. She falls asleep very quickly for her nap but is only sleeping for about 1.5 hrs. I know this isn’t terrible but she used to sleep about 2.15 hrs when you combined nap 1+2. I have been giving her an early bedtime of 6:30 to make sure she doesn’t get crazy over tired but I think she needs more sleep – she seems tired in the morning and has started to wake up even earlier. Is there anything I can do to help lengthen this or do I just need to wait it out? Thank you!
This is EXACTLY where I am with my almost 15 month old! I would love to hear thoughts on this situation. She is also waking up 30-40 minutes into her naps and crying. She almost always goes back to sleep, but I hate hearing her cry like that. I’ve tried giving Tylenol and it doesn’t help, so I don’t think it’s teething. My suspicion is she may be overtired which is interrupting her nap, but I’m not sure.
Sarah and Ellie- we are going through the same thing here with my 15 month old. I am trying hard to stretch him to nap time (which is 11:30am right now) but he only sleeps his usual 1.15 or 1.5 hours and then is ready for bed at 545 or 6pm. On two naps he sleeps for an hour each but then his bedtime is closer to 8pm. We just started this transition and so I’m not sure if the one nap will get longer eventually or if we should just go back to 2 naps and try again in another month or so.
Jess,
I’m having the same exact issues with my 14 month old. We started the transition about 2 weeks ago. I keep her awake until 11:30am, then she will nap for 1.5-2 hours, then bedtime at 6pm. I don’t think she’s getting enough sleep because she wakes up cranky from her nap! Plus she’s been getting up in the morning earlier and earlier. Did your LO’s naps extend after a few more weeks or did you go back to 2 naps?
Pretty sure we’re going through a nap transition here! Suddenly out of the blue, our little guy (recently turned one year old) who was taking two very regular 1.5 hr naps (usually about 9:30 and 2:20-3:00, bedtime is generally about 8-8:30) absolutely refused to take a morning nap! he took one two hour nap about 12:00 today, and was cranky, but seemed generally okay this evening. He was getting super cranky and tried about 6:30 (which is completely understandable), so my question is how much earlier should we put him to bed when he does just take one nap? Just half an hour, whole hour? I know he should be going down earlier, he certainly could use it. but we also don’t want to start waking up at 5:30 because he went to bed too early. Tonight, we kept him up till about 8, which in hindsight was probably a mistake, as mentioned above, he was super tired starting about 6:30, but that seemed way too early for bed. and by 7:30, he seemed okay again, so we waited till 8. any thoughts would be appreciated
Hi. My 8 month old son just started sleeping through the nights at 7 months after following your guidelines. It worked like a charm except for naps. He’s always had trouble napping unless he was nursed to sleep. And even then, I couldn’t lay him down or he’s wake within a minute. Around 4 months old, he started only napping for 45 minutes and it’s gone down and down since then. He currently naps for about 17 minutes. I lay him down awake, he falls asleep, and then wakes up shortly after. I don’t believe he’s ready to drop a nap because he’s a big crank after being awake for 2-2.5 at a time. Should I try to lengthen his awake time and go to 2 naps?
Sincerely, mommy who is about to start school again and needs to do homework during naps
Can someone tell me what the appropriate amount of awake time is for a child napping once per day and how this may adjust as the child gets older? My daughter is just about 14 months and has been working hard to convince me that she only needs one nap. Most days she only takes one even when we try for two. I have trying to switch to a once a day schedule and it usually looks like this… Wake-up around 6-6:30am, nap around 11:30am, wake-up around 1 (yes I wish this was longer!) and bedtime 6:30pm. Are me awake times too long? And how should I adjust as she gets older? Thanks!!
Any chance you remember what you did here? Going through same…..
Alexis!!
Can you help me. I think my 10.5 month old is trying to drop her nap down to one nap. We used to put her in her crib, fully awake, and she would fuss for about 15 minutes before crashing out. Now, she takes about 45 minutes-1 hour to fall asleep for both of her naps!
My problem is, she may not be tired enough, but the longer I keep her up in between naps then bedtime gets pushed back later, which we are trying to avoid.
Here’s our schedule:
Wake up: 6 a.m.
In crib: between 9-9:15
* Doesn’t fall asleep till around 10 and gets really, really upset. Sometimes her leg gets stuck in the crib, I have to go in there and un-stick it, which makes it worse. Sometimes I can smell the poop from outside the door, and have to go in and change a poopy diaper. But usually I am very consistent about not going in there.
Sleep from 10ish and I wake her up at 11:45 to try to keep her on a schedule. She doesn’t want to wake up.
In crib for second nap: 2:30
Doesn’t fall asleep until 3:30-3:45
I wake her up at 4:45 to protect bedtime.
Bedtime: in crib at 7:30. Takes her about 30 minutes to fall asleep, but she’s not crying REALLY hard like she is at naps. She fusses a bit, but just kind of rolls around… Not a big deal.
If I keep stretching her out in between naps then her afternoon nap becomes so late? Is it time to drop her nap? It just feels early.
I am curious what you found out. We are experiencing similar issues
What did you find out? I am in the same boat too!
This is me right now so I posted on Facebook and have decided to go to one nap as she will be in nursery soon. But I’m petrified I’m making a bad parenting choice. What was the feedback you got?
My baby is the same — we’re going to try for one nap. She’s 11 months old and has been really resisting second nap (although she has been off-and-on challenging with naps in general, so it has been kind of hard to distinguish). When it comes down to it, I just don’t want to let her scream herself to sleep for her second nap, so we’re going to try pushing the first nap a little later. The good news is, she skipped second nap the last three days in a row and then went to bed just fine at regular bedtime each night. I was worried because most experts suggest that she’s on the young side for one nap only — but it seems better to me than struggling with her over trying to force second nap.
Her schedule has been: 7:30 wake up, 10:30 first nap, 3:30 second nap, 8:30 bedtime. She was sleeping 1 – 1.5 hours each nap, but lately first nap has gotten longer. We’re going to try pushing first nap to 11:30, and only going for second nap if she has a short first nap.
Wish me luck! I’d love to hear what other parents in this situation did….
We have a (almost) 6 month old baby. She is anxious to crawl right now. She was napping about 4 times a day, and was doing a great job. She typically could make it about an hour and forty five minutes of awake time and then needed a nap. We could rock her until she was calm and drowsy and then put her in her crib and she would drift off. Sleeping anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Starting last week, I was putting her down for a nap in the morning as usual and she drifted off. I put her in her crib and she was wide awake kicking. All the patting and shhhhing did nothing,she started to cry. If I picked her up, she’d immediately go back to bed, the second I put her down she was wide awake kicking. This then turns into mommy being frustrated and baby ends up screaming as we’ve tried this asleep/crib thing about 15 times! She will go down for 2 naps a day now which are about an hour and a half long, but is refusing the early morning nap and the late afternoon nap now. It worries me because everything I read online says that they shouldn’t be up for more than 2 hours at this age, however she is pushing about 3 to 4 hours in between naps sometime. She goes to bed around 630 and wakes up at about 6AM with a feeding around 4AM. Is this meaning she only needs 2 naps a day and I need to ignore the online “how to’s” or is this some type of regression, teething, developmental phase?? Has anyone else had this problem?
Hi Chantel, I knew this post is old but Im currently exactly where you were!!! same age same problem! If you can read my comment here could you please let me know the update and how can you manage it please? Thanks 🙂
How can I get my 22 month old to sleep past 6 am. .. she used to sleep until 645-7 am. … and nap from 1-230…. naps are similar now and bedtime has always been 740..help!!!!!
HELP!!!
My toddler is 17 months old.
He is making me crazy at the moment.
He is an early riser – round 05h30 / 06h00 (06h30 is rare and exciting).
Up until recently he has been having two naps a day.
The morning nap from 09h30-10h30. We have been shortening that one cos he could sleep for a few hours then, but if we allow him, the rest of the day is a mess.
The afternoon nap from 13h30-14h30 – also waking him to avoid night time / bed time battles (which it didn’t actually).
Every fibre in my body says not to wake a sleeping baby….btw.
I decided about 2 weeks ago to rather drop the morning nap and to allow him a long midday nap from which he could wake himself, within reason. Max 2 hours. This instead of disturbing his naps not once, but TWICE every day.
This nap is from 12h30-14h30.
He is super tired by nap time.
We can’t take him anywhere before his nap at all for fear of him falling asleep in the pram or car and thereby causing routine chaos.
We do drive him to the park and back and that works. It’s 3 minutes in the car. Then light lunch and to sleep.
BUT.
We have bed time battles. He just isn’t tired at bed time which I try to keep at 20h00 (late, I know). It’s currently 21h00 and the little “monster” is playing. It wasn’t really any better when we were doing two naps.
The 14h30 nap end time is common to the 2 and 1 nap schedule and is making me question what we are doing….
He doesn’t want to sleep and then has started doing the dreaded middle of the night waking for 2 or 3 hours recently.
He still wakes early. Even though he isn’t getting a great night’s sleep.
Over this last weekend I let him nap when I saw he was tired, and on both Saturday and Sunday he had a dip in energy and fell asleep nicely at 10h30 and slept for 2,5 hours each time. Bedtime was not a nightmare over the weekend and neither did he wake during the night.
It’s a long stretch to bed time at 19h30/20h00 from 12h30/13h00, but he seemed to handle that. Kind of.
So, what do I do.
Seems like the late morning nap is good but is it the way to go?
I should move bed time earlier, but I know that he’s then going to wake up at 04h00!!
I am happy to accommodate the baby and juggle and switch it up as his needs dictate, but just wondering if there’s actually a way to transition and get through this time relatively sanely.
Also, he isn’t walking yet.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Alexis
Hello Alexis,
I know you say that 2 year olds mostly need to nap. But what if my son, who just turned 2, spends an hour playing in his cot most days without napping? Then on days he does fall asleep, he won’t go to sleep at bedtime?
Does this sound like he’s ready not to nap?
Thanks,
Melanie
I’m not sure if my 14 month old is ready to go down to one nap or not. It still seems a bit early. He’s started taking these really long naps in the morning– 2 1/2 hours. Usually he has no trouble falling asleep in the morning so I do think he’s tired and he’ll nap later in the afternoon as well. On occassion he fights morning nap, though. Like right now he’s just groaning/whining in there… So he’s had a few one nap days recently but they are earlier in the day and I worry about him then being awake too long before bed time. I hate these transitional periods. If he’s ready for one nap, I just want him to do it all at once. Any advice?
My just one year old seems to want to drop his morning nap this week. (He’s been awake in his crib for an hour during his usual naptime talking and jumping around but not sleeping.) However, he isn’t napping much longer for his afternoon nap and is actually sleeping less at night. 🙁 Is this just his body trying to get used to the new schedule? I want him to get good sleep and right now it seems like he just wants to be up all the time. (He isn’t walking yet and he is teething but have been giving him Tylenol for that when he seems bothered by it.)
This was his previous schedule:
-5:30am wakeup
-9am nap (45min-1.5 hours)
-2pm nap (1.5 hours)
-7 or 7:30 bedtime
This week:
-4:45 or 5am wakeup (HEAVEN HELP US!) We leave him in his crib talking to himself until 5:30
-12:30 or 1pm nap (had been at least 2 hours at first but today was only 1)
-7 or 7:30 bed
Seeking advice to make this transition smooth.
Thanks
Lorraine
I wish I could help.. Mt daughter is 13.5 months and has begun fighting her morning naps for past two weeks. I’ve been trying to be consistent and keep putting her down it just isn’t successful. But then her afternoon nap is short and she’s tired and cranky. Have you figured out any tricks yet?
My 13.5 month old has been fighting her morning naps for the past 2 weeks. She was napping consistently 2 good naps, one around 930 second around 230 ans would nap an hour to an hour and a half. Past two weeks she has been fighting the morning nap. Either lays down for 20 minutes while tossing and turning then wakes up crying, or will cry soon as I try to put her in her bed. Because she hasn’t been having a morning nap, she is cranky and miserable and the afternoon nap is short. So then she becomes overtired.. I’m not sure if this is a sign she’s ready for one nap a day…. Suggestions of how to know, or how to go about that??
Hi everyone. I’m really hoping I can get some advice.
I was hoping to come across something about what to do when babies just stop napping all together lol
My 8 month old, who was never a good sleeper (still night waking) or napper, has been refusing to nap in her crib for three weeks now. She was napping in there okay before, for 20-40 minutes 3x a day. But now she will only sleep while in the car or if shes not alone. Once she makes contact with her mattress she wakes up and cries. I’ve tried letting her cry it out at naps. She’s cried for over 2 hours every time.
I understand the separation anxiety thing but what the heck?! She must be exhausted. I sure am! Which then in turn makes her a crab cake for the rest of the day.
Looking for any kind of suggestions or advice, as I’m willing to try anything here.
I just love how this site has so many people with different experiences and all the supports. Thank you all in advance! Until then, I’ll continue searching like a mad woman for some kind of solution.
Hi. I really need some advice about my toddlers naps please! He’s 2 years 8 months and has always been a good sleeper bar a few bumps along the way (I know how lucky I am!!). He’s still having an afternoon nap and it’s a long one – sometimes up to 3 hours. So generally 1 til 4. He then goes down at 7 ish (quite often comes back out at half past at the mo and has to be put back down) but is waking at 5.30 ish. He’s always had phases of early waking that go away but I’m wondering if the nap is the issue. I tried for a few days to cut the nap down but he’s super grumpy and still wakes early. Without a big sleep he’s really grumpy! But would that pass if I continued to cut the nap to say an hour and he gradually got used to it?? Or is the early waking another phase and it will pass and I should let him sleep as he wants?? He doesn’t struggle to fall asleep for his nap and happily goes down most of the time. Any thoughts??!! Thank you.
Heellllpppp
My 16 month old is, I suspect, leaving two naps in the dust. Except – she’s now not napping at.all.
We bumped her 1:30 nap up and today I started trying at 12:15 after we ate. We did CIO as a baby and she has been blissfully putting herself to sleep since.
Now?
Now, she arches her back and loses her shit when I put her down for sleep. She pulls up and stands in the crib crying until I go in to settle her. I played the game for over an hour yesterday and she finally fell asleep in my arms (whoops) and then slept in the crib for – 45 stinkin minutes.
I’m just at wits end. I don’t know what to do. She refuses am nap and so we decided to try one nap but now she’s resisting that too She’s exhausted – I even saw her start to fall asleep standing up while protesting me putting her down.
Helphelphelpppppp what’s going on!?!
Well it could be a lot of things. It’s a touch early but lots of kiddos have a huge 18 month sleep regression around that time (YAAAY! said no parent ever). It could be nap droppage. It could be she’s working on a new skill (such as walking).
Most kids are down to 1 nap by 18 months so let’s assume it’s time for 1. She may be OVER tired by 1:30 or even 12:15 so I would start by finding a time maybe midway between her old nap #1 and nap #2.
I would use your words – she understands you! Honey it’s time for rest. If you can’t fall asleep you can sing, play with stuffed animals, etc. If you scream I will hear you (I’m nearby and I love you) but I won’t come get you. Because your body needs to rest so you can grow strong and healthy! I love you and I’ll see you when rest time is over.
Going in to settle her is lovely but I worry that it’s leading you down the path of encouraging her non-sleeping (the less she sleeps the more time she gets to hang with you)?
God bless you for your response!
We are doing this at the moment. Her deal is she likes to stand up in the crib (in protest?) while I wait her out.
What do you think on time – how long should I let her work it out in there in her own? An hour? The funny thing is she’s not crying – she’s just standing in the crib and occasionally squawking (though, sometimes she cries).
Trying to remember it’s all shifting all the time, right?
She went down at 6:30p last night and slept until 8:25am this morning! Girlfriend is tired!!
Hi Alexis, Thanks so much for all of this guidance. I have a very similar situation as Erin in the last post, even the stopping herself from falling asleep while standing 🙂 I have 15 month old who was fighting her afternoon nap and is preparing for a toddler room transition at daycare as well. So she was definitely ready for the one nap from all of the afternoon nap refusal that was going on. She’s always been an early riser – but had been doing pretty well, mostly around 6 am. She’s been on one nap at daycare for the last four weeks and is maxing out at 90 minutes, but feel like she’ll hopefully go longer once in the toddler room. At home on the weekends though, she’s barely getting an hour and when she wakes up from the nap simply will NOT go back to sleep. I let her soothe herself to sleep starting around 12 or 12:10 – sometimes its quick and sometimes it takes about 25 minutes but she eventually falls asleep. She just won’t stay asleep – waking up around the 30 minute or hour mark. Other tricky piece is that she’s just up so early, she’s not getting enough overall sleep (in bed by 6:30 but up at 5:30) so I know she needs it.
Do you have guidance for how I should respond when she wakes up? Today she woke up after 30 minutes – I went in and put her back down telling her it wasn’t time to get up yet and checked in 10 minutes later to do the same b/c she was crying. Then she stopped crying so I left her, but she just sat here with her blanket for an hour and 10 minutes. If I keep doing that will she eventually learn to go back to sleep during this time period? Even sleep crutches like rocking, etc. weren’t working so I’m worried she’s just destined to be a disaster 🙂
Thanks for any and all support!
My 21-month-old is wildly inconsistent with her sleep. Naps are my big issue. I finally have gotten her to fall asleep by herself for naptime, which is a huge victory for us. 🙂 However, about 90% of the time, she wakes up after a half hour. On a lucky day, she goes back to sleep. At least 60% of the time, she’s standing up in her crib crying and won’t stop until I get her. I can usually get her back asleep but can’t get her back in the crib. Her bedtime is 7:45 and she wakes up anywhere from 5 a.m. to 6:15 (on a really good but oh-so-rare day). She goes to sleep by herself at night as well. Naptime is around 1, 1:30 if she slept in until 6ish. Is naptime too late? Think she’s waking up b/c she’s overtired? She eats lunch at 11:45 and is a sloooow eater so she’s not usually done until 12:45.
My 14 month old won’t take naps at all since Christmas vacation. She will fall asleep on me but won’t do any crib napping or car napping or stroller napping. She wakes up at 8 am. And I try to put her to bed at 11:30 every day. She goes to bed at night fine now after a month of hell with that too. After a half hour if her screaming and my coming in to tell her to go to sleep several times I go in and just make her play quietly in a pack in play set up in the living room for an hour so I can get some stuff done. She has really bad separation axiety. And she screams the entire time I leave her at the nursery.
Her night bedtime I have moved to 6:30 although she generally doesn’t fall asleep til 7:30.
I am pulling my hair out. I hate she screams every day but don’t know what I should do about it.
Help please! I’ve just posted this question on a different article but this suits better! Sorry for the doubling up but I’m desperate for advice … I’m pretty sure my seven month old is dropping her third nap. This week her daytime naps have lengthened to 1.5-2 hours at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
I’ve been trying to get her to nap in the buggy as per your advice, but she is resisting it now (despite a half hour walk yesterday at 4.15pm she was still wide awake). Plus this is dinner time in our family. The problem is that she can’t manage the 4 hour gap between the end of her afternoon nap (2.45) and bedtime (6.30-7pm). She goes down at 7 but wakes after 45 minutes and then cries until 9.30. She’s done this all week. We give her the dummy, cuddles, rock her, feed her, leave her alone (big mistake – she screamed herself hoarse) – nothing helps. It’s like going back to the glory days of colic. Should I give her a nap at 5, and put her down later? Or just put up with it until she matures enough to cope with being awake for four hours (Which I know could be a couple of months!) Please help – I am dreading the evenings now!
(Oh and I can’t really change the times of her naps much as I have to do the school run at 9 and 3)
Hello, my wee tot dropped his third nap around the same time yours seems to be. We finally settled for a 2-3-3 to 3.5 schedule for a few months. (2 hours awake then nap, 3 hours awake then second nap, and finally 3 to 3.5 hours awake then night night) Only recently at 10 months old is he able to stay up closer to 4 hours at the end of the day. We moved his bed time up a bit when he dropped his third nap and it worked like a charm. Is your babe sleeping through the night or only waking up once or so a night? That can help to make up for the lost nap time during the day.
Hi Rose, thanks for your reply. Our sleep issues have been complicated recently by a series of coughs/colds which keep waking our baby up. She usually sleeps very well at night, waking maybe twice and settling back with a dummy. I was feeding her once as well until thisw eek when breastfeeding failed (another story) Anyway it’s worked best to persevere with three naps, third in the buggy, but I think she probably is ready for two longer ones. Problem is, I tried it earlier this week and she did the same thing, waking after an hour and screaming. She wakes our older two sons (our five year old is so tired at the moment), and she has also stated waking at 6.30 every morning (I can only assume that something is waking her, her timing is so consistent). When she wakes an hour into bedtime it’s as if she thinks it’s her third nap. If I persevered would she get the idea? I don’t like her being so distressed…
My daughter is 3 years old and she used to sleep through the night and only had a wake up every once in awhile. She used to take an hour and a half nap during the day and sleep from 9:30pm – 7:00am. The past couple of months she has been waking up between 12:30-2am and coming to our room. We tell her to go back to bed, anywhere from one to four times at night. She waits like ten minutes and comes back to our bed. She has learned how to get out of her room and has been visiting our room in the night along with no mid-day nap. Now that her mid-day nap is gone she has a bedtime of 8pm and goes to bed really easily. The biggest problem I have with this is she wakes up sometimes at 5am after waking in the middle of the night. She is getting less than 9 hours of sleep total. Do you think this is due to her no day nap now or possible something else?
What do you do when a 21 month old refuses to take naps? He started about a month ago. As far as I know he’s fine at daycare. They lay down at 12:30. When I try putting him in the crib at 12:30 he just cries, for an hour. I’ve tried later too, but he just cries then too.
I’ve tried laying on the floor next to him, sometimes it helps but it takes 15+ minutes. Minutes I no longer have since I have a newborn. Any thoughts on what to do?
Dear Alexis,
I have a problem nobody seems to mention and I don’t know how to fix. My baby wakes up several times during the night and falls asleep again on her own a minute or 5 later. Which is great but it happens EVERY night SEVERAL times. I hear each of these awakenings and often can’t fall asleep afterwards whilst she is peacefully snoozing away. Up until 4 months when I fed her at night I never heard from her until 4-4:40 am. After I stopped feeding her at night (by just giving her a dummy) there was more or less a month of her sleeping through and also not waking at night and surely never waking up shortly after the bedtime. However since she turned 5 months, we weaned her off the sleepyhead, moved her to the big cot, she learned to roll very well and now crawl she wakes up cries for a minute or two reshuffles, gets on all 4, falls again on her tummy, sucks her thumb and falls asleep. But WHY does she wake up???? She is now 6.5 months. She has also dropped the 3rd nap now and gets really really tired in the evening, so I am assuming it doesn’t help. Ive tired everything to make her have a catnap at least but no luck – she used to easily have a little snooze in the pram. Anyhow, if you know why these awakenings could be happening PLEASE let me know or maybe write a post about it? Resettling herself is not a problem, associations are not a problem, hunger not a problem, WHAT IS??
P.S. Love your website!!
Hi! Just wanted to let you know that I was experiencing the same thing with my baby for awhile! it was so strange, he would cry in his sleep for a few minutes, sometimes up to 20 min or so but settle back to sleep. I noticed this seemed to happen more when he was overtired at bedtime. maybe try putting her bedtime a little earlier for a few days to see if it makes a difference? especially since she dropped her 3rd nap now and is very tired u mentioned.
I am in a struggle with my daughter’s school over this topic. She’s 4.5 and in a private pre-k. She is sleeping from 1 to 2 hours a day which is killing us at night.
I’ve had multiple discussions with the staff and they refuse to bend on this policy. When my oldest was there, they stated to transition them at 4 to quiet time. Now that has gone out the window. We thought of providing something from our pediatrician to get around it. Would this work?
When they drop down to one nap, does it sometimes take awhile before they lengthen that nap? My 1yo is dropping down to one nap and is still napping 1hr 15-30 mins (previously was taking two 1hr10min naps). That seems short compared to what I remember my older daughter doing.
I have the same question, only my daughter (13 months) has gone from taking 2 naps with at least one of them being 1hr+ to one nap that is less than an hour. CUE TOTAL RAGE.
I’m assuming she needs one nap because if I put her down any earlier it takes 40+ min for her to fall asleep, and if she sleeps past 10:30am I can’t get her to take a 2nd nap.
I’m wondering if my 9.5month girl is telling me she only wants 1 nap. First off let me say she has been the best night time sleeper and went to 2 naps about 5-6 months. Babys schedule before refusing naps or pushing naps so far back they mess with bed time was: 630-7 wake up, Nap one hour after waking up for an hour, 4 hours later take nap two for an hour then bed time 4 hours later at 6. Last month 1st nap is more like 2-3 hours after she wakes up for an hour and 30 mins. then just plays in bed for nap two. Her bed time has been closer to 7 now cuz of her shifting naps. Thing is if we keep letting her shift late naps she keeps shifting her whole day. She ALWAYS sleeps 12-13 hours no matter what. At one point she had shifted her bed/wake up time got to 8-8:30. IS MY BABY SAYING ONE NAP PLEASE? Or am I missing something?
My 3.5YO stopped napping a few months ago, much to everyone’s dismay. Now, instead of sleeping, he turns into a shrieking, miserable and emotionally volatile monster at about 12:30 every day. Yet he WILL NOT fall asleep during the day, no matter how many sleep cues we lay on, no matter how loud the white noise is or how dark the room. He’s going to bed at 7 on the nose and sleeps until 5:45 or 6 (yuck). I’m at a loss. Any ideas, anyone?
My baby is four and a half month old and is fighting the 3rd nap since she was about 3 months. The “problem” is she has chunky naps, and often she wakes up from the second between 3 and 4 pm. Then she can hardly hold on until 6 when we have bedtime routine including bath and feeding, and she’s asleep by 7. When she wakes up in the middle of the night for night feeding we are fine, but lately she’s started to sleep through, meaning she’s awake at five because she’s not sleepy any more! On that day I can fit in three naps, but on the next day she wakes up later again, meaning she has only two naps again, waking up at five am again. And repeat.
I’m not sure what to do about it.
I’ve tried to make her have a catnap, but she’s just not falling asleep for another nap if the previous nap ended between 3 and 4.
Good morning! When she wakes up at 5am, if you feed her, will she go back to sleep for a little bit longer? A “snooze button feed” could help a lot. When you try to have her catnap, are you using the swing/stroller/babywearing? Any of those might make it easier for her to fall asleep for the catnap. Good luck!
Hi,
Thanks for replying 🙂 at five am I feed her. Previously she went back to sleep after that, but this was when her bedtime was later and/or she woke up earlier at night too. But now she just stays awake for 1.5 hrs.
As for the naps, I always feed her and wait for her to get as sleepy so that she closes her eyes, then I put her in the swing. But when I try get a late-ish third nap, she’s nursing, but she stays alert. I haven’t tried to put her in the swing after that. I’ve always felt it would not help if she just not dozing off… As for the stroller, she’s one of those who does not sleep in the buggy…
Good morning! I was wondering if anyone had some insight- I have a 13 month old who naps twice a day. For a week or two now, he’s been waking up at 4am, not crying, just wakes up and babbles, plays with his lovey. This is how he usually wakes up when he starts the day at 730am. I usually wait 15min to see if he will fall back asleep, and he doesn’t, so I go in and give him a snooze feed bottle. After the bottle, I put him back in crib and leave, and he takes about another 15-20 min to fall back asleep. So he’s been up a total of about an hour at this point! He’s been sleeping in later because of this middle of the night waking. Is this a sign of dropping to one nap? Any advice/insight appreciated!
Hello,
I have been having an issue transitioning my 22 month old son to 1 nap and would love some advice!! Here’s the background – my son WAS actually a decent napper up until about a month ago. Took 2 naps (9am and 2pm lasting from 1 hr 15 to 2 hrs each) for awhile. About a month ago he started sleeping for the first nap and then boycotted the second nap. This went on a couple days then both naps were being boycotted. Separation anxiety was at an all time high as well. It was a mess. We tried moving the AM nap by putting him down at 10, 11, 12, 1 – nothing worked. We finally got 10:30 to work once (1 hr nap) and we stuck with that. Our pediatrician suggested doing that for a few days to a week then pushing it back by 30 min – 1 hr until we get to a more normal after lunch nap. He was good with 10:30 (taking an hour maybe an hour and a half nap). We tried moving to 11 (he slept 45 min – hour). Since he was doing kind of ok (at least he was napping) and I have a preschooler as well that needs to be picked up from school I tried moving him to 12:45 yesterday it worked (not great took a 45 min nap but then passed out on my lap after he got up for an additional 20-30 min), but then today he screamed like crazy used the Ferber progressive waiting with no luck ended in no crib nap, but I brought him downstairs and he passed out immediately in my arms for 45 min.
Any thoughts on what to do next!?! He seems too overtired to settle at 12:30/1:00, but an hour nap at 11:00 doesnt hold him well to the end of the day not to mention how tricky it is with my older sons school schedule. Should we try going back to 2 naps and see what happens? Do we keep trying a 12:30 / 1:00 nap and eventually it could work? im totally lost!! My first son we just dropped the AM nap and he slept in the afternoon – took him a bit to start taking long naps but at least he napped.
Any advice and help you can provide would be so much appreciated!!
Thank you,
Melissa
How did this work out for you? My 19 month old is ready for 1 nap, as she falls asleep easily in the morning and totally struggles in the afternoon, sometimes not managing a second at all until really late then can’t sleep come bedtime! The worst thing is from waking consistently at 6:30ish she now wakes 5:15-45 which I think is because she’s overtired. Because she is waking so early she can’t make it to a 12:00 nap, and if we go anywhere more than 5 minutes away in the car will fall asleep in the morning, then won’t take the second nap even if the morning one is a ten minute catnap! If I could just get her to wake 6:30 I could get her to 12 and cope with one nap. A month ago she did this most days until she hit a growth / development spurt and was exhausted each day by 10:30 again) But we’re in a cycle of overtired waking too early then napping too early. Did you end up just waiting for the after lunchtime nap to be good enough and soldiering through? 2 naps just isn’t working as a general rule, we can’t keep trying it (although so convenient for driving somewhere for the day to do it on the way out and back, much less so when she doesn’t do the way back nap!!!) Did this get better? I’m 29 weeks pregnant and so tired at the mo. Ps I can’t make bedtime earlier than the 6:30 – 6:45 it already is most days!
Hi! I think we are in the middle of the 2-1 nap dropping/transition with our 16 month old. And it sucks! We have been trying to extend the morning wake time to about 4 hours, only get an hour nap if we are lucky, and then a catnap in the swing between 3 and 4pm (swing bc he’s still small enough to fit and bc he won’t nap in crib for the afternoon nap anymore). Bedtime around 7pm, it’s been pushed up from 730pm since the napping has been a mess. He has been waking up early, around 530/545am and not going back to sleep. So then we get stuck with an early morning nap bc of the early wakeup instead of moving to a late morning/early afternoon nap. Should we continue the catnap in the afternoon and 7pm bedtime (or earlier bedtime)? Skip catnap and push bedtime even earlier? Ahhh these transitional phases suck!
Also, he used to wake up in the morning and from his naps and play happily in his crib for at least 20minutes before fussing to be out. Ever since he started walking, he wakes up and IMMEDIATELY starts crying, he doesn’t play in the crib at all anymore. Does that sound typical?
Hi! So yesterday he woke up at 630am (usual wakeup), napped from 1030am-1130am, skipped afternoon nap. He went to sleep at 645pm (it was the earliest we could do, we get home from work at 5pm). He woke up at 1130pm, which was so strange bc he hasn’t had a night waking in months, even on days when he has skipped naps or had short naps. And then he woke up early at 530am. I am sooo doubting myself now. I have no idea what we are doing- did we misread him, is he not ready to drop to one nap? Did we put him down too early or late last night? When he wakes up early, I give him a cup of milk and put him back in the crib and leave, and then he screams/cries until I get him out at 630am (trying to keep that consistent) which is a horrible start to the day. I’d would greatly appreciate any insight/advice/tips- just wait it out? Go cold turkey with one nap? go back to 2 naps somehow? Should I be doing something differently when he wakes early? TIA!!
Hi, I’m not sure if you figured this out by now, but I kind of feel like we are in the same both. any advice would be greatly appreciated. Some people have found that they are not ready for the 1 nap transition and go back to 2 and try again in a month or 2.
Hi! So we kind of just winged it the last 2 months. If he woke up later in the morning and took a long chunky nap, then it was a 1 nap day. if he woke up too early in the morning, or took too short of a nap, we’d offer 2 naps. I also realized putting him to sleep early was sort of backfiring on me on the days that he took 2 naps- so I started sticking to a 730pm bedtime esp on 2 nap days. We had one week of great weather last month and I pushed him to a 5 hour wake time by having him play outside and that helped! he’s still been waking up early, but most mornings i can give him a snooze feed and he will fuss back to sleep (it can take up to an hour tho). We are finally on a 1 nap schedule and he usually naps 1.5-2 hours, but still working on an ideal nap time at 12/1230. The past few days he didn’t wake up early which was awesome!
Playing outside in the morning helped a LOT because it pushed him to stretch his wake time, if we were stuck inside all morning, it was hard to stretch his wake time. And playing outside tired him out a lot so he easily went down for a nap. Good luck!!
I can relate to the last few posters. My 14-month-old has been struggling with the transition from 2 naps to one for probably the last 3 weeks or so. She was on a really consistent schedule for MONTHS- I mean probably a good 6 months or more (which I know is insanely lucky for me) where she would wake around 7am, nap 10-12, then nap again 3-4 or 5, then bed at 7pm.
She has always been super reliable about the morning nap but a few weeks ago started steadfastly refusing the afternoon nap. She kind of alternated 1 and 2 naps every other day or so but now she just fusses for an hour or longer if we try to put her down for a second nap.
The problem is, she gets over tired by bedtime and then her night sleep suffers- most often the symptom is 5 or 5:30 am wakeups.
When I try to shift her morning nap later to compensate, sometimes it works (several days she napped from 11am-2pm!!!!! praise jah!) but more often it backfires and she wakes at her old wake time of noon. which just reduces her total nap time.
SO what I’m trying for now is, waiting until she shows definite signs of tiredness in the morning before I put her down- it occasionally still happens at 10 but usually we at least make it to 10:30. she sleeps usually until at least 12:30 but on good days makes it past 1. I’ve stopped offering the afternoon nap unless she’s acting ABSOLUTELY tired, and on days when it’s possible, and if she’s also acting tired (which she usually is by 5 pm lol) we put her down at 6 instead of 7. On good days she will actually sleep straight through until 7 or 7:30 the next morning.
I just hope this 6pm bedtime isn’t going to need to persist because it’s just sooooo early! sometimes it’s just not possible.
Thank you for this post! And thank you to the people who left comments. I found this post so insightful and appropriate for my current situation. I am a first time mom, my daughter is almost 5 months old. I won’t get into the details of her naps, I just want to make the general comment that, after reading the author’s advice and the posts from others that, I am reassured about napping and other challenges parenthood bring.
My 18 month old is taking two short naps (1 hr or just a little longer) but utterly exhausted after each one, he just lays on the floor sucking his thumb like he’s trying to go back to sleep. He falls asleep on his own 100% of the time. I don’t get why he won’t sleep longer, and I don’t want to drop a nap because he’s a zombie before each of those two naps. He’s just so tired. Teething? It seems like this has lasted for weeks.
Hey there! Advice?
My 5 month old has the following schedule:
Up for the day 6/6:30am, nurse
Breakfast 8am
Nap #1 8:30 (only 45-55 min), bottle
Nap #2 11:00 (only 45-55 min), bottle
Nap #3 1:30 (only 45-55 min), solids
Nap #4 3:30 (only 45-55 min) <–he's trying to drop this nap!
Nurse, then bed by 6/6:30pm
The problem is, the past few days, my MIL lays him in his crib for the 4th nap and he never sleeps! He happily babbles for about 30 minutes before he fusses and she finally decides–I guess he doesn't want to nap! That means he's up from 2:15 until bedtime with just a small 10 minute snooze in the car on the way home to our house… I don't mind that he's dropping the 4th nap, but with only 45 minute naps the rest of the day I feel like it's not enough daytime sleep! My MIL says she puts him down when he starts acting very tired (rubbing eyes, smooshing face into her chest, yawning… and he goes right to sleep when she lays him down) How can I help him lengthen his naps? She has dark sheets hanging in the windows and a white noise fan. Or is this OK that he's taking short naps AND up for 3.5-4 hours before bedtime?
No advice, but my 5.5 month old is on the same schedule! I might try to stretch her awake times to get her down to three naps.
Hi Alexis!
Thank you so much for this site. It’s one of the most relatable and easy to read sleep sites out there. I’m at a loss with my 11.5 month old daughter. She’s been taking total crap naps for 3 weeks now. We actually paid for a sleep consultant from a local business (recommended by a friend) and have been religiously following our prescribed sleep plan for 10 days and naps honestly haven’t improved. The consultant believes that it just needs more time and consistency and it IS working. This is our current schedule:
Up around 6:15
1st Nap around 9;00
– this nap usually is the “good” nap and it’s 1.5-1.75 hours. Usually 1.5 hours on the nose.
2nd nap around 1:30
– this nap is more often than not (ONCE in two weeks it was 40 minutes) 25 minutes exactly. I leave her in the crib for he remaining 35 minutes of an hour and she has actually never gone back to sleep. She cries.
Bedtime at 6:00 sharp
– sleeps through until morning (yay!)
My daughter sleeps with a lovey and in a sleep sack. No pacifier. She has been putting herself to sleep religiously for at least 6 months. No rocking not feeding, etc to sleep. We do a regimented pre-nap routine and pre-bedtime routine. Her room is very dark and she sleeps with white noise. But no matter what we do we can’t get her to take 2 good naps. One day the morning nap was 25 minutes and then the afternoon was 1.5 hours.
So, here’s my questions:
Do we continue to try two naps? Ride this schedule out for a bit longer and hope that things improve?
Or is it possible that my girl is ready for one nap?
Sorry for the novel of a post. Thanks again for all the great information here.
My 12 month old is starting to fight her naps more. Honestly it’s probably my fault. I know I shouldn’t rock her to sleep for her naps but rocking a sleeping baby is one of my favorite parts of having a baby… And also it has never affected her night sleep. She’s slept through the night since she was 4 months old (generally speaking, anyway). But now she is is fighting when going down for the naps and I worry I’ve missed my boat to easily get her to take naps on her own and I’m really not sure she is ready to drop to one nap. She’s only at the very beginning of your range. Any help would be appreciated!!!
My one year old was previously sleeping through from about 7-5:39/6ish (which felt amazing after 10month of not sleeping – we ended up following the CIO method in your book) but now is waking up several times a night and needs us to go in and settle him which can take ages! He was previously having two 1-1.5 hour naps a day and now they have shortened too and are getting more difficult to get him down for his first nap. I’m wondering if the reason for all of this is because he’s ready to drop the first nap and just have a lunchtime nap? Or have we reinforced the idea of us helping him back to sleep by going in to him in the night? I should add that he falls asleep independently at night but has also been fighting it more recently!
People used to say how they wish babies were born with a manual.It seems we already have that.thanks for giving us this precious handbook on how to trouble shoot.
Great article! Just a quick question. My son is turning 3 months this Sunday (oct 26) and were at a good schedule sort of speak. His wake windows are 1 hour. He does roughly 5 naps a day. His first 3 naps are generally 2 hours in length. The fourth nap he does 1-1.5 hours. He takes a bit longer to fall asleep for this one. And the last nap, he doesn’t sleep at all, maybe at most 30 minutes. He knows how to fall asleep on his own. For nighttime, it is all over the place as well sometimes because he may add a 6th cat nap too. Because he is struggling more with his last nap (5th one), does this mean he should be awake much longer and drop a nap? Or is it too early? Thanks
My son is 10 months and I’m wondering if he’s wanting to drop his second nap? Everything went nuts around 6 months and he dropped the 3rd nap and nights and days got much better. Since then his naps have gone from 1.5hrs and 2hrs, to 1hr and 2hrs, to 45mins and 2hrs, to 30mins and 2hrs, to 30mins and 1.5hrs…and the last 2 or so weeks have been 45mins and 45mins or 30mins and 45mins. Some days he’s willing to have a longer 1st nap up to 1.5hrs, but the 2nd nap maxes out at 45mins. There’s zero chance of resettling when he wakes in the second one. His MO seems to be to be early for many things so it wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t want to miss something else that could be the actual issue.
Side note: He’s been self settling and resettling since 9 weeks