dropping morning nap - IT JUST ISN'T HAPPENING HERE!! DD 17m. When did yours drop their morning nap?

[emeraldgirl1]

It is proving absolutely impossible to drop the morning nap here.

It's not like I am trying to force it but there have been several instances where it seemed like she was ready to drop it. Taking much longer to settle for the lunchtime nap, mostly.

(FWIW the longest she naps for in the mornings is 30 min, I wake her after that as otherwise she wouldn't sleep at lunchtime and would be screaming with tiredness by 3pm...)

But dropping the nap has led to nothing but a twofold problem - her lunchtime nap, no matter if I bring it forward to as early as 11.30 or 11.45, is no longer than 1h 15 mins. She just wakes up, still exhausted but not going back to sleep. Whereas when she has her morning nap, her lunchtime nap is 1h 30 or 40 mins! And she wakes up refreshed! And the same (I suspect) overtiredness problem is then having an impact on early morning waking - on the days she has had no morning nap, she is awake the next morning at 5ish, whereas on the days she has the morning nap we usually make it to 6am ish.

Has anyone else had this problem??

I was assuming that no morning nap would mean a lovely long 2ish hour lunchtime nap, based on the fact that she usually sleeps for a good 1h30 at lunchtime anyway. I work from home so need to work while she sleeps and have based a lot of my strategy for the next few months on her transitioning to a long lunchtime nap!!!

So how do I drop the morning nap without it seeming to mean that she sleeps less at lunchtime, and am I trying this too early anyway? It seems to me as if she is probably not ready but everyone else I know seems to be able to drop the morning nap around 12 months!!

FWIW she is a very 'busy' little soul, always on the go both mentally and physically, PLUS we never really make it beyond 6.15 am wake-up on a GOOD day, so I suspect she does just get more tired in the mornings than some little ones...

Any advice at all?

I have tried shortening the morning nap btw, but 20 mins seems to leave her too tired to last all morning and 30 mins leads to too long a settle time at lunchtime!! I can't win!!

[slightlyinsane]

I personally wouldn't drop it yet. If you are set on doing so then you have to reduce it for a while then go cold turkey and deal with the fall out until she's adjusted, thessame will happen with the afternoon nap when she's ready to drop that. Oh and there's no guarantee she will nap for longer in the afternoon

[emeraldgirl1]

slightly insane - thank you!! NO, I think I"ve pretty much accepted that there's no way of dropping the morning nap yet... DD is literally the only 17mo I know who still has the morning nap, so I've just been getting a bit paranoid that everyone else is doing something different for a reason!! Most of the babies her age all stopped napping twice a day at 1 year old... though maybe that was more to fit in with nursery schedules? DD doesn't go to nursery yet.

Bit :( to hear there's no guarantee she will sleep longer!! I'd been anticipating this amazing stretch in the middle of the day... my best friend's little boy (almost 2) has to be woken at 2.5 hours in the middle of the day so I was dreaming of that, really... :)

[JuniperTisane]

DS2 was exactly the same! I was despairing of him ever getting through the morning til about a month ago. I admit by 18 months I was fed up and started pushing on through keeping him busy for longer and its sort of worked. He's 19.5 months now and better. I would say he manages without a morning nap on 4-5 days out of 7 which at least allows me to do stuff in the morning.

He does sleep for two hours when I do get him down though. We got there in the end.

[StillWishihadabs]

The 6am wake up is the real issue here. This is why she can't make it through. Some ideas:

1. 2 naps of 1.5 hours around 9:30-10:30/11 and 2:30/3-4ish, therefore a later bedtime (8-8:30) and hopefully in time a later wake-up allowing you to transition to one nap a day.
   
   2)1 nap in the late morning (11-1ish) preceded by a substantial snack and followed by a grown up time lunch. This suits a baby on a 6-6 or 6-7 schedule.

[DrankSangriaInThePark]

I dropped the morning nap just before dd turned 1 and the afternoon one at just before she turned 2. Had to, because even if she only slept for 45 mins in the afternoon, she would be awake until midnight.
They're all different and I guess it's trial and error as to what works for you.

[emeraldgirl1]

Thanks v much everyone!!

StillWishIHadAbs thank you - she is on a 7pm bedtime (falls asleep easily then, whereas if we ever get her to bed later she is a screaming mess; also the 7pm bedtime works really well for me as I need to work in the evenings) so I think unfortunately the 3pm ish nap wouldn't work... I really like your other idea of trying to get her down at about 11am but so far every time I have tried this she just wakes up after 1h15 and so is awake ridicullously early (12.15, 12.30ish) and is a screaming mess by about 4.30... I guess I could always try this and bring her bedtime much earlier for a bit, but I think it would need to be about a 5.30pm bedtime in order to avoid overtiredness and an early morning wake!!

If she would nap at 11 and stay asleep until about 1pm that would make it just about feasible and I could push her bedtime to, say, 6.30pm for a few weeks until she got used to it. But she just doesn't seem able to stay asleep longer than 1 h 15 unless she has that little nap early morning!

Could the issue be that I cuddle her to sleep for the naps, rather than let her settle herself? We had great success with getting her to sttn after I stopped cuddling her to sleep and did gradual retreat, as I think she learned that if she woke up she was able to put herself back to sleep... but she is SO resistant to self-settling for naps (think an hour of roaming round her cot laughing and then getting upset) that I just avoid it in general as otherwise she just misses naps completely.

Fwiw I think I would (reluctantly!) accept that a lunchtime-ish nap of 1h 15 was enough for her IF she didn't wake up tired, crying, and screeching with exhaustion 2-3 hours later... I do think she needs longer at lunchtime without the morning nap, I just don't know how to make her do it!!!

[emeraldgirl1]

Juniper, can I ask how you got your DS to sleep for 2 hours...? Or did it just happen naturally??

[Artandco]

I would just keep it tbh. Mine both napped until 18/20 months in morning and afternoon. Now youngest is 3 1/2 and still has his 2 hr afternoon nap 99% of the time. At 18 months he would nap 1 hr am, 2 -3hrs pm

[emeraldgirl1]

thanks artandco - good to hear we're not the only ones! I think clearly all babies have different sleep requirements and I'm being a bit easily swayed... my mum and sister keep behaving as though I'm trying to keep 'babying' DD by putting her down for a morning sleep as in their experience with their own children, they only had them sleeping roughly an hour a day from age 1... I also got a well-meant lecture from a completely stranger at a mum and baby group recently about how the only way I'd solve the early wake-ups was to drop the morning nap... Trouble is in our experience, the opposite is apparently true!

[emeraldgirl1]

Oh, and when she IS looking more ready to drop the nap, are there any tips on the best way to do it? Go cold turkey or reduce it by 5 mins a day over a few weeks...?

[JuniperTisane]

He just does . I didn't do anything apart from put him in his cot, music thingy on and walk out the door.

He will only nap for half an hour in the carseat and not at all in the pushchair. If we're out he's awake all day and nutty by bedtime. In contrast the cot sends him to sleep and he stays there.

[emeraldgirl1]

Thanks Juniper!! Yes, like your DS my DD won't nap at ALL in the pushchair, the car seat is better but the pushchair is out.

These little toddlers, I don't know... they're lucky they;re so cute :)

[Threesocks]

They are all so different ...my dd dropped her morning nap at around 12 months.

When she was ready to drop her morning nap (early wakings was the clue for us) I started first capping her morning nap until it was about 20 mins. Then started to shift the morning nap later by about 15 mins every few days until it got to a more reasonable time (11/11:30 ish). I would then let her sleep for as long as she wanted... We had a roughish week at first, but just used a very short cat nap or an earlier bedtime if she didn't sleep very long in the day (once as early as 6pm) .. eventually it settled down and I was able to gradually able to move the nap a bit later in the day. She now (at 16 months) sleeps 12/12:30-2/3pm and then 7pm bedtime, 6:30/7am wake up.

[emeraldgirl1]

Threesocks - oh, that sounds a great idea... I htink I may try something like that when she is ready... the trouble we have is that though she does wake early (6.15am is a GOOD day for us) I honestly think this is more down to overtiredness than needing to drop the morning nap because on the days I dropped a nap she was awake even more horrendously early the next day... even if she had an earlier bedtime etc.

In all honesty I don't think she's ever slept beyond 7am a single day since she was born, she was a godawful sleeper until 11m so these days we are just grateful that she sleeps through the night (mostly).

That's good advice though about doing it in increments, I may have made the mistake, even if she is ready, of doing it all too soon.

Cutting it down first and then moving it gradually later sounds like a good plan...

[Artandco]

I don't think naps make sleep worse at night, in fact I fully believe in the whole sleep breeds sleep.

Mine now sleep roughly 9pm-9am at night, and nap 2-4pm daily. Most friends children who parents insisted dropped nap sleep 7pm-5/6am

We are not early birds so would much rather have children awake in eve than at silly o'clock in am

[Hamnvik]

We had similar problems, DS is 16months and a 5am waker. He really struggles to get past 10am without a nap but he absolutely refuses to have a second nap. About a month ago I gave up completely so he naps 10.30-12 and bed at 6. He is a bit of a mess by six but I'm hoping he will get used to it. It was probably not the best thing to do but after weeks of afternoon nap battles and both of us in tears I had had enough! I think if you can still get her to have two naps just enjoy the peace.

[Shatteredmamma1]

Hi emeraldgirl

We have only just dropped our morning nap reliably and DS is
the same age. Took a couple of months of alternating between
1-2 naps which was annoying if you wanted to plan anything!
I agree just keep it until she drops it, maybe try again in a month
or so. Good luck

[farfallarocks]

DD now has a lunchtime nap but until about 18 months she preferred a morning nap. We would put her down at 10 and she would sleep for 2 hours then and then a little cat nap at 3 or 4 in the buggy which saw her through until bedtime.

[JackieBrambles]

My DS is 18 months and dropped his morning nap at 13 months-ish. Mainly because i settled him into nursery 4 days a week then and they were all on a one nap a day schedule!

He was shattered at first and exhausted in the evenings but he's fine now.

For a while when he was with me I kept him on a 2 nap strategy, putting him down at 10am-ish for 1.5hours ish and then 40 mins or so at around 3.30pm but it started affecting him going to sleep at night (and he started to resist the pm nap) so I decided to keep consistent with the one nap.

For a couple of weeks I had to really work hard at keeping him awake in the mornings. Had to go out but NOT for a walk in the buggy (as he'd try to have a cheeky kip) but to the park/play dates/stay and play etc, anything exciting that would keep him awake and engaged. Then an early lunch 11.45-12ish and then sleep. He just naturally slept for longer then, because he was more tired!

Now he sleeps for about 1.5hrs/max 2 from 12.30 or 1pm. I wake him after 2 hours though now because he would sleep on and it would definitely stop him going to sleep at 7.30-8pm.

Sorry, probably not much help.

[BocaDeTrucha]

Interesting reading. I was about to post re the same subject. D's is 11 months and currently almost an hour and a half into his morning nap!!!! I was wanting to stop the morning nap as when he starts nursery next week they only do lunchtime naps but he just seems to need it. He only naps in his pushchair in the hall.... Won't entertain the idea of the cot except at bedtime, another challenge for the nursery staff when he starts!!!! He wakes up around 7am but nothing close to sleeping through the night.... Still waking several times for nursing

[Drumsticks99]

My 20mth old still needs 2 naps on most days!

[mewkins]

We reduced it by 5 mins every couple of days. When it was 15 mins we kept mornings low key and then had an 11.30lunch. Keep at it...it may take a while for the long lunchtime nap to kick in. Or you may be like me and get a coupke of weeks of long naps and then have to cut those back too otherwise they don't go to bed til 10pm that night!

[rach2713]

I have been reading these comments and I kinda feel lucky that my daughter dropped her naps when she was ready to it she is 20 months old and sleeps from about 7.30/8 and wakes bout 9 in morning. But if she needs a nap in the day I will let her and she will sleep 2 hours but i won't let her sleep past 4 in afternoon cuz then she is up til 10/11 at night