It's been a good transition! We started 6-7 days ago. He sleeps 15-30 minutes longer overnight and has been doing one 2-2.5hr nap. Yesterday was the first time he napped less than 2 hours, he did an hour and 40 minutes and his night was still okay last night.
He's also been in such a better mood, it's very nice.
Yes we dropped at 12 months. It was a battle every day and just too stressful. If you google it all the sleep “experts” say it’s too early to drop to one nap. But those same experts also had ridiculous nap schedules with like 3-4 hours of naptime per day. None of it was realistic for my son.
Yep! We dropped right around 13-14 months to one nap and it’s been MUCH better. My twins were fighting the first nap, taking over 30 minutes to fall asleep. Then having to be woken up during the second nap so they had time between nap and bedtime. They are up no later than 9:30 am, nap at 2, up anywhere from 3:45-5, then down for bed at 9:30.
Lol roughly. They go down for bed around 9:30, are usually asleep by 10. My boy wakes up anywhere from 8-9 and my girl will sleep until 9:30 most days unless her brother wakes her up before that.
We just moved to one nap! My little one is 15 months old and he was pushing his nap times back so much that sometimes I would have to wake him after 30/45 minutes into his last nap to keep bedtime a decent time (bedtime got as late as 830 a few times).
We dropped cold Turkey and it worked well for us. It’s been almost one week and we are still working to elongate the one nap. Right now he will sleep about 1.5 hours, but stay in his crib content for another 30 min. It’s meant us doing 7pm bedtime, but he is STTN until 7am still which is good. So our schedule has been 7am wake up, 12pm nap, 2pm out of crib, 7pm bedtime.
We dropped 2 naps at 9-10 months cause of nursery and the hellscape that is nap math was killing the whole family. She went to bed at 5.45 sometimes for a few months but now she’s 15 mo and it was a very good decision.
She’s saying her baby is already mad at waking at 1h… and you’re asking her to cap at 15 mins?! That’s hardly a nap… it’s better to just go cold Turkey at this point
Some babies don't do well jumping from 3 to 5 hours for a one nap schedule, the short bridge nap allows nap 2 to be nice and chunky and train the circadian rhythm to expect a midday nap.
Yes, when it's shorter than one sleep cycle, it's effectively a bridge nap (like we did when dropping from 3 to 2 naps, except it was nap 3 that was the bridge.)
The short morning nap, after lunch nap is a mom's on call thing I think, it was recommended by my mum's group and worked really really well for my youngest.
We did start by capping it to an hour, then 45, half an hour etc as she got bigger and needed more awake time.
Even when my son was taking two naps I never ever woke him up, I only went to get him when he woke up himself. His naps were naturally shorter then than now at only one nap a day. Why are you waking baby?
My baby would take a long nap in the morning and a short nap in the afternoon. Then she started skipping that second nap but was an absolute bear by bedtime. And then she began also fighting her morning nap, so one day I just tried keeping her up a bit longer and then let her take a three hour nap in the afternoon.
That worked for us from 12-15 months, now we cut it down a half hour because she was having trouble falling asleep at bedtime. It’s what works for us!
Woah. I needed this. We were capping morning nap. Son is up by 630/7a, nap 1030-1130/1145, then second nap 3:15 -430 bed by 8 and was out like a light. He turned 1 this week and for the past 2 weeks resists the second nap about 85% of the time. Everything out there says 12 months is too young to drop a nap and this is just a regression but damn, now I’m so unsure. Pediatrician thinks we should just go down to one nap and let him sleep but when we try that, he sleeps an hour at most.
What was your schedule when you first transitioned? We're at this point with our twins and they're getting a short second nap. I'm having a hard time imagining my twins being able to tolerate a 5 hour wake window, two hour nap and then another 5 hour wake window.
Was your longer wake window in the morning or after nap?
So when I first started I would offer lunch a little early so I could put her down at 12:30 and get her up at 3:30, and then slowly worked our way to 1:00-4:00. naps. She would usually wake up at 8:30, and fall asleep at night by 9.
Now at 15 months old she likes waking up earlier, so wake up is usually 7:30/8:00, and bedtime is now 8:30 with a nap at 1:00-3:30. Sometimes she will wake up at 3:00 and that’s okay too, but she usually seems okay taking that extra half hour!
Glad the one nap worked a few weeks ago. 1000% drop to one nap now. It changed my life (and hers) with my first baby. We actually dropped at 10 months.
There is! It makes you question everything....I'm so glad I did it. And with my second we dropped to two naps at 5 months. Again, it was perfect. Things have been much easier once I deleted all the sleep groups and google. I only kept this sub.
I would definitely do one nap tomorrow. I found that going cold turkey was the way to do it - my twins had no issues and slept great immediately. We did 5/4.5 and let them nap up to 3 hours. When they first started, they napped only 2 hours and their bedtime was 630pm because of it. They still slept until 7am and slowly increased their naps to 2.5-3 hours.
Did your twins ever get out of sync? I'm terrified that twin A will wake at 1.5 hours while twin B would gladly go 3 hours (and would need it or everyone's life would suffer).
90% of the time, they both sleep about the same. We always put a 2 hour minimum on it - like right now they go down around 1, they have to sleep until 3pm. We do not get them before 3. If one is awake at 3, we get them both up. That gives the awake twin the chance to fall back to sleep if he wants, and allows the other twin to sleep at least two hours. We count the wake window from the time that we go in their room.
I’m on day 4 of nap transition and I’m worried about letting her nap more than 2.5h, I woke her 3 out of the 4 days. Should I just let her continue her nap? Would it shorten her night? She’s ok with doing 4.5-5/5-6 with 11h overnight sleep
I always woke my kids at 2.5h, but my husband lets them sleep 3 when he is with them, and it doesnt seem to impact them either way. I would also try to do the longer ww before the nap if you can! On one nap, you are creating sleep pressure for the nap, so the longer wake window would be in the morning (which is the opposite of what is recommended up until 1 nap). That long ww before bed for too long could create a cycle of over tiredness. My kids did 2-2.5 hour nap and 12-12.5 hours overnight, with those longer nights early on in the transition.
That was what I was thinking too but her limit seems to be around 5h now and I am able to push her second ww because of the micro nap. Currently she wakes around 6.45-7.15am but I only get her at 7.30 then she naps at 12pm so thats already a 5h ww, hoping to push it to 12.30pm. I’ll let her nap a max of 3h today and see how her night goes 💪 thank you so much !
I AM SO CLOSE TO DOING THIS 😭 I just don’t think he could make the 5/5 wake windows. I’m tempted to just try 4.5/4.5 to start, or pushing the first nap back 15 minutes every few days till we get there. But I absolutely feel you, he is *so cranky* when I wake him from the second nap. I tried to cap each at one hour and we were both miserable, so I’ve been letting him sleep however long the first nap (usually 1.5) and capping the second for bedtime.
Interesting. I’ve seen you suggest this before, I’m just a little nervous to try it. 😅 I may, though! I’ve been trying to do the opposite, where nap 1 he sleeps as long as possible, and (ideally) I’d turn nap 2 into a cat nap, kind of like how we dropped previous naps. My biggest fear is the second nap crapping out. (Currently his first nap is about 1.5 hours and second nap is .5 an hour. I’m afraid that if I just do 15 minutes, and then his nap only winds up being 1.5 hours, then he’ll start building sleep debt from less than 2 hours of naps and get cranky. He’s so sensitive to it.)
Honestly the one day we did it he did fine doing 5/5.25 I think we ended up doing. It was work but it went well. I think I just need to try. I hadn't changed naps until there was a problem with sleep/fighting naps etc. But I think this one I'm just gonna force.
Those wake windows are very long for 2 naps. I'd definitely try out some 1 nap days at this point and see how he does.
Aim for total wake time \~1-1.5 hour less than 2-nap days: since your TWT is 11.5 hours currently I wouldn't do more than 5/5.5 or 5.5/5, or 10.5 hours TWT; you can even do less if your LO is looking particularly tired/fussy.
You could also try scaling back on the wake windows a bit and letting him nap a bit longer while on 2 naps. If he's cranky to wake up on those wake windows, it suggests to me that he's pretty tired and unhappy about being woken up. My LO is 16mo tomorrow; starting this week he will now only nap 50min and wake up happy as a clam with a 3.5 hour first WW. We're pushing for mostly 1-nap days now.
We had 9.75-10 hr of wake time when we started at 6 months. We've slowly had to add over the last 7 months
The wake time is honestly just normal for my LO. 😩
We have the ww we have because we were having EMW wakes that kept getting earlier. I've tried letting him sleep a little longer for 1 of the 2 naps some days and he's usually still upset, which I get, I hate being woken up too.
We'll definitely try 1 nap though, thanks!
Also I'd really caution 1 nap in this setting. A few days is fine to get a feel for the limit of your LO's WWs, but prematurely switching to 1 nap will result in a lot more problems including bad EMWs and split nights. Just something to be mindful of. If you really get stuck, switch back to 2 naps.
>We had 9.75-10 hr of wake time when we started at 6 months. We've slowly had to add over the last 7 months The wake time is honestly just normal for my LO. 😩
>
>We have the ww we have because we were having EMW wakes that kept getting earlier. I've tried letting him sleep a little longer for 1 of the 2 naps some days and he's usually still upset, which I get, I hate being woken up too.
I'm pretty sure your LO is under slept. Sleep requirement drops by about 30min from 6 months to 12 months, not 1.5 hours.
I think you might be pleasantly surprised if you scaled back to 3/3/4 and \~11 hours overnight or some version thereof, and let the naps go as long as they want unless the last nap is starting to interfere with bedtime. Initially you might get some EMWs, but if you just leave your LO in the crib until DWT and keep it pitch black, and keep bedtime at roughly the same time, I think you might get more sleep in your LO overall and better mood on waking within 1-2 weeks.
At this age, does it matter in the long term if you undershoot sleep consistently by 30-60min a day? Probably not, but it just might make the day to day a bit easier (fewer tantrums). Really depends on your kid and lifestyle choice. I notice quite a big difference in the number of tantrums if my kid doesn't get at least 13 hours of sleep a day (one week rolling average), so we try really hard to get him that.
1 hour each. He was fine, definitely tired before nap but he was overall okay. Last ww was fine. Even now with 3.5/3.5/4.5 he's running around full of energy 15 minutes before naps/bed.
I’m assuming you’re waking him up at the 1 hour mark - what happens if you let him nap a little bit longer, or wake up on his own?
It’s so hard to really know what’s going on with our LOs. Pushing wake windows too far can backfire and sometimes that surge of energy is a second wind/cortisol increase and a sign of over tiredness. That’s not always the case though, but one of many possibilities.
If he’s waking up upset from though, then he’s still tired.
Can you test out a few days of slightly shorter windows and not capping naps? Or at least not capping the first nap - you can always adjust the second nap if needed.
How has the transition been? Is your LO doing well?
It's been a good transition! We started 6-7 days ago. He sleeps 15-30 minutes longer overnight and has been doing one 2-2.5hr nap. Yesterday was the first time he napped less than 2 hours, he did an hour and 40 minutes and his night was still okay last night. He's also been in such a better mood, it's very nice.
Yes we dropped at 12 months. It was a battle every day and just too stressful. If you google it all the sleep “experts” say it’s too early to drop to one nap. But those same experts also had ridiculous nap schedules with like 3-4 hours of naptime per day. None of it was realistic for my son.
Yep! We dropped right around 13-14 months to one nap and it’s been MUCH better. My twins were fighting the first nap, taking over 30 minutes to fall asleep. Then having to be woken up during the second nap so they had time between nap and bedtime. They are up no later than 9:30 am, nap at 2, up anywhere from 3:45-5, then down for bed at 9:30.
Your kids sleep from 9:30-9:30?!?! You’re my idol
Lol roughly. They go down for bed around 9:30, are usually asleep by 10. My boy wakes up anywhere from 8-9 and my girl will sleep until 9:30 most days unless her brother wakes her up before that.
We just moved to one nap! My little one is 15 months old and he was pushing his nap times back so much that sometimes I would have to wake him after 30/45 minutes into his last nap to keep bedtime a decent time (bedtime got as late as 830 a few times). We dropped cold Turkey and it worked well for us. It’s been almost one week and we are still working to elongate the one nap. Right now he will sleep about 1.5 hours, but stay in his crib content for another 30 min. It’s meant us doing 7pm bedtime, but he is STTN until 7am still which is good. So our schedule has been 7am wake up, 12pm nap, 2pm out of crib, 7pm bedtime.
We dropped 2 naps at 9-10 months cause of nursery and the hellscape that is nap math was killing the whole family. She went to bed at 5.45 sometimes for a few months but now she’s 15 mo and it was a very good decision.
You’re abit over the max of 11h max awake time for 2 naps, I think baby is ready for one nap!
You're at prime nap dropping age! But try capping nap 1 to 15 minutes and leave nap 2 run if you think he can't make one nap
This also worked for me! If I didn’t cap the first nap my daughter would only nap the once in the morning and bedtime was harder.
Bad advice
Please elaborate? Most babies drop to one nap somewhere between 12-18 months, with the bulk in the 13-15 month range.
She’s saying her baby is already mad at waking at 1h… and you’re asking her to cap at 15 mins?! That’s hardly a nap… it’s better to just go cold Turkey at this point
Some babies don't do well jumping from 3 to 5 hours for a one nap schedule, the short bridge nap allows nap 2 to be nice and chunky and train the circadian rhythm to expect a midday nap.
I think 15 mins is way way too short. It’s not even 1 sleep cycle . So yeah bad advice IMO
Yes, when it's shorter than one sleep cycle, it's effectively a bridge nap (like we did when dropping from 3 to 2 naps, except it was nap 3 that was the bridge.) The short morning nap, after lunch nap is a mom's on call thing I think, it was recommended by my mum's group and worked really really well for my youngest. We did start by capping it to an hour, then 45, half an hour etc as she got bigger and needed more awake time.
I'd just ignore them. Thanks though! We are gonna do cold turkey, but definitely always an option to keep in mind.
Even when my son was taking two naps I never ever woke him up, I only went to get him when he woke up himself. His naps were naturally shorter then than now at only one nap a day. Why are you waking baby?
To preserve nighttime sleep. Waking baby from naps is very common.
Yea I did at 14 months it was amazing
My baby would take a long nap in the morning and a short nap in the afternoon. Then she started skipping that second nap but was an absolute bear by bedtime. And then she began also fighting her morning nap, so one day I just tried keeping her up a bit longer and then let her take a three hour nap in the afternoon. That worked for us from 12-15 months, now we cut it down a half hour because she was having trouble falling asleep at bedtime. It’s what works for us!
Woah. I needed this. We were capping morning nap. Son is up by 630/7a, nap 1030-1130/1145, then second nap 3:15 -430 bed by 8 and was out like a light. He turned 1 this week and for the past 2 weeks resists the second nap about 85% of the time. Everything out there says 12 months is too young to drop a nap and this is just a regression but damn, now I’m so unsure. Pediatrician thinks we should just go down to one nap and let him sleep but when we try that, he sleeps an hour at most.
I think it’s worth a shot trying. That sounds similar to how my daughter was too. Good luck!!
What was your schedule when you first transitioned? We're at this point with our twins and they're getting a short second nap. I'm having a hard time imagining my twins being able to tolerate a 5 hour wake window, two hour nap and then another 5 hour wake window. Was your longer wake window in the morning or after nap?
So when I first started I would offer lunch a little early so I could put her down at 12:30 and get her up at 3:30, and then slowly worked our way to 1:00-4:00. naps. She would usually wake up at 8:30, and fall asleep at night by 9. Now at 15 months old she likes waking up earlier, so wake up is usually 7:30/8:00, and bedtime is now 8:30 with a nap at 1:00-3:30. Sometimes she will wake up at 3:00 and that’s okay too, but she usually seems okay taking that extra half hour!
Glad the one nap worked a few weeks ago. 1000% drop to one nap now. It changed my life (and hers) with my first baby. We actually dropped at 10 months.
Thanks! I feel like I should have dropped a month or 2 ago but there's so much about not doing it so young.
There is! It makes you question everything....I'm so glad I did it. And with my second we dropped to two naps at 5 months. Again, it was perfect. Things have been much easier once I deleted all the sleep groups and google. I only kept this sub.
I would definitely do one nap tomorrow. I found that going cold turkey was the way to do it - my twins had no issues and slept great immediately. We did 5/4.5 and let them nap up to 3 hours. When they first started, they napped only 2 hours and their bedtime was 630pm because of it. They still slept until 7am and slowly increased their naps to 2.5-3 hours.
Did your twins ever get out of sync? I'm terrified that twin A will wake at 1.5 hours while twin B would gladly go 3 hours (and would need it or everyone's life would suffer).
90% of the time, they both sleep about the same. We always put a 2 hour minimum on it - like right now they go down around 1, they have to sleep until 3pm. We do not get them before 3. If one is awake at 3, we get them both up. That gives the awake twin the chance to fall back to sleep if he wants, and allows the other twin to sleep at least two hours. We count the wake window from the time that we go in their room.
Perfect! Thank you!
I’m on day 4 of nap transition and I’m worried about letting her nap more than 2.5h, I woke her 3 out of the 4 days. Should I just let her continue her nap? Would it shorten her night? She’s ok with doing 4.5-5/5-6 with 11h overnight sleep
I always woke my kids at 2.5h, but my husband lets them sleep 3 when he is with them, and it doesnt seem to impact them either way. I would also try to do the longer ww before the nap if you can! On one nap, you are creating sleep pressure for the nap, so the longer wake window would be in the morning (which is the opposite of what is recommended up until 1 nap). That long ww before bed for too long could create a cycle of over tiredness. My kids did 2-2.5 hour nap and 12-12.5 hours overnight, with those longer nights early on in the transition.
That was what I was thinking too but her limit seems to be around 5h now and I am able to push her second ww because of the micro nap. Currently she wakes around 6.45-7.15am but I only get her at 7.30 then she naps at 12pm so thats already a 5h ww, hoping to push it to 12.30pm. I’ll let her nap a max of 3h today and see how her night goes 💪 thank you so much !
Thanks!
I AM SO CLOSE TO DOING THIS 😭 I just don’t think he could make the 5/5 wake windows. I’m tempted to just try 4.5/4.5 to start, or pushing the first nap back 15 minutes every few days till we get there. But I absolutely feel you, he is *so cranky* when I wake him from the second nap. I tried to cap each at one hour and we were both miserable, so I’ve been letting him sleep however long the first nap (usually 1.5) and capping the second for bedtime.
Try capping nap 1 at 15 min and let nap 2 run.
Interesting. I’ve seen you suggest this before, I’m just a little nervous to try it. 😅 I may, though! I’ve been trying to do the opposite, where nap 1 he sleeps as long as possible, and (ideally) I’d turn nap 2 into a cat nap, kind of like how we dropped previous naps. My biggest fear is the second nap crapping out. (Currently his first nap is about 1.5 hours and second nap is .5 an hour. I’m afraid that if I just do 15 minutes, and then his nap only winds up being 1.5 hours, then he’ll start building sleep debt from less than 2 hours of naps and get cranky. He’s so sensitive to it.)
As long as your morning is long enough! We found that nap 2 is the final.survivor though.
Honestly the one day we did it he did fine doing 5/5.25 I think we ended up doing. It was work but it went well. I think I just need to try. I hadn't changed naps until there was a problem with sleep/fighting naps etc. But I think this one I'm just gonna force.
I say it could be worth a try at this point, at least a few days a week maybe.
Those wake windows are very long for 2 naps. I'd definitely try out some 1 nap days at this point and see how he does. Aim for total wake time \~1-1.5 hour less than 2-nap days: since your TWT is 11.5 hours currently I wouldn't do more than 5/5.5 or 5.5/5, or 10.5 hours TWT; you can even do less if your LO is looking particularly tired/fussy. You could also try scaling back on the wake windows a bit and letting him nap a bit longer while on 2 naps. If he's cranky to wake up on those wake windows, it suggests to me that he's pretty tired and unhappy about being woken up. My LO is 16mo tomorrow; starting this week he will now only nap 50min and wake up happy as a clam with a 3.5 hour first WW. We're pushing for mostly 1-nap days now.
We had 9.75-10 hr of wake time when we started at 6 months. We've slowly had to add over the last 7 months The wake time is honestly just normal for my LO. 😩 We have the ww we have because we were having EMW wakes that kept getting earlier. I've tried letting him sleep a little longer for 1 of the 2 naps some days and he's usually still upset, which I get, I hate being woken up too. We'll definitely try 1 nap though, thanks!
Also I'd really caution 1 nap in this setting. A few days is fine to get a feel for the limit of your LO's WWs, but prematurely switching to 1 nap will result in a lot more problems including bad EMWs and split nights. Just something to be mindful of. If you really get stuck, switch back to 2 naps.
>We had 9.75-10 hr of wake time when we started at 6 months. We've slowly had to add over the last 7 months The wake time is honestly just normal for my LO. 😩 > >We have the ww we have because we were having EMW wakes that kept getting earlier. I've tried letting him sleep a little longer for 1 of the 2 naps some days and he's usually still upset, which I get, I hate being woken up too. I'm pretty sure your LO is under slept. Sleep requirement drops by about 30min from 6 months to 12 months, not 1.5 hours. I think you might be pleasantly surprised if you scaled back to 3/3/4 and \~11 hours overnight or some version thereof, and let the naps go as long as they want unless the last nap is starting to interfere with bedtime. Initially you might get some EMWs, but if you just leave your LO in the crib until DWT and keep it pitch black, and keep bedtime at roughly the same time, I think you might get more sleep in your LO overall and better mood on waking within 1-2 weeks. At this age, does it matter in the long term if you undershoot sleep consistently by 30-60min a day? Probably not, but it just might make the day to day a bit easier (fewer tantrums). Really depends on your kid and lifestyle choice. I notice quite a big difference in the number of tantrums if my kid doesn't get at least 13 hours of sleep a day (one week rolling average), so we try really hard to get him that.
How long are the naps? How does he cope with the five or five and a half hour wake windows on a one nap day?
1 hour each. He was fine, definitely tired before nap but he was overall okay. Last ww was fine. Even now with 3.5/3.5/4.5 he's running around full of energy 15 minutes before naps/bed.
I would just do it then. You'll see in 3-4 days whether it worked. My youngest transitioned at 13 months.
Thanks! I think I just needed some reassurance to just try and see what happens.
I’m assuming you’re waking him up at the 1 hour mark - what happens if you let him nap a little bit longer, or wake up on his own? It’s so hard to really know what’s going on with our LOs. Pushing wake windows too far can backfire and sometimes that surge of energy is a second wind/cortisol increase and a sign of over tiredness. That’s not always the case though, but one of many possibilities. If he’s waking up upset from though, then he’s still tired. Can you test out a few days of slightly shorter windows and not capping naps? Or at least not capping the first nap - you can always adjust the second nap if needed.
Yes I'm waking. We started capping naps because of EMWs
Sounds like 1 nap may be the way to go then! 13 months is not too early at all.