The March to 1 Nap: A Practical Guide to Baby Nap Transitions (4m-18m-ish)

@knowledgeisnotignorant Well he just had another really bad night. Went down ok but woke 3 hours later and was trying to put himself back to sleep for 2hours.. not upset, just lots of flapping about and talking to himself. He eventually got upset so my partner went in and he was super hot.. turns out he has a fever of 38.9 so this also might explain a few things 😢

Thank you so much for your tips! Hopefully this fever is short lived and we can get him back on track.
 
@archangellover Yikes! Yeah get through fever first. My son’s wake windows shrink a ton during fevers so I’d try some 3 hour ones and just let him sleep as much as he wants. Hopefully he’ll do like 3 hour awake, 3 hour nap, and 4 hour last wake window before knocking out. Ibuprofen works better than acetaminophen for fevers. Good luck!
 
@knowledgeisnotignorant Hi Omega -

I loved going through your profile and reading your posts. Sounds like you have a lot of happy followers, and you’ve got a new one here. I have a couple questions. I’ve wanted to shell out $$$$ to get help either with a consultant or phone call something to get all of this out! So sorry in advance for the long post.

My son is soon-to-be 19 months old. We have had a switched activated since turning 18 months old and I’m in dire need of some help! He used to be such a great, reliable, and predictable sleeper. Prior to where we are now, we would wake him at 7:30 each day, have a 3 hr WW, go down around 10:30 and usually slept until 12. Then back down again at 3-5 and then down again at 8, falling asleep at 8:30 as I would nurse him before bedtime. Sometimes he would fall asleep, but most often, did not.

March 4th hit and our world got flipped upside down. He was pretty sick, and I could see lots of teeth buds. Well it turned out our 6 months of getting no teeth prompted 8 to erupt at once. He also started screaming (for up to an hour) before each nap when it used to be light protesting for 5-10 minutes. He also then started waking up an hour before DWT. Usually around 6:30. Our TST went from 13.5 hours down to 10, very quickly.

Now, we’re stuck. I tried just cutting the nap cold turkey and doing 6 WW and then a goal of 5 WW before bed. My dream schedule would look like:
7:30 wake
12:30-3 nap
8 bed

Right now, it’s all over the place and usually crap naps that are less than 90 minutes. I wait the 15-20 minutes but there’s no going back. And self soothing seems minimal when he used to be able to do so. He used to even wake up from naps (75% of the time) happy and talking. Now, (100%) he cries until we enter the room. There isn’t even a lull to try to come in then.

If I had to take an average of days our current schedule is:
6:45-7:15 wake
12 nap
1:30 wake
7:30 start bedtime, asleep very quickly falling asleep (100% of the time) while nursing, KO’d and easy to transition into crib.

Lately he has also been waking up at 6:30, but my husband can talk over the monitor and say “lay down” and he usually does and gives us another 45-60 minutes, but that’s just recent. Also if I try to say “lay down” game over, and he will refuse.

This lack of predictability or consistency is driving us nuts after having a good long stretch of the predictability with two naps. We miss that. Almost being a month into this transition with only two-2 hour+ naps is driving us to the brink of insanity.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to message me if you need anymore clarification or information. Based on what others have to say and what I see you sharing, I’d gladly pay for a consult if necessary!
 
@davidkampisch Hey thanks for reaching out.

A few questions:

1) What time is he seeing light every morning? If his room is completely blacked out then he shouldn't see any light until you get him. What time is that happening?

2) How old was he when he settled out on 2 naps?

3) Did he have any regression (nap or bedtime fighting) in that past few months? How old was he and when did you overcome that?

4) Did you guys have daylight savings recently, and how did you handle that?
 
@knowledgeisnotignorant Thanks for the reply!
  1. We do have blackout blinds that were custom fit to our window, I would say 1/4” of light seeps through the side though. If I still go in in the morning, I can see him, but it takes a little bit of adjustment.
  2. He settled on 2 naps around 14 months. Super solid 1 1/2-2 hours every time. (Edit: 9 months, not 14!)
  3. I’m assuming the 18 month regression happened described above. I don’t recall any before? Maybe at 6 months by very brief. Nothing a month or so that I can recall.
  4. We did have DST on March 10. Because he was already going to bed late, and fighting with the regression, nap change, teething. We didn’t do anything in hopes the late bedtime would allow him to skip that hour just fine.
 
@davidkampisch Interesting. So he was on 3 naps up until 14 months?

This is a pretty late time to transition to 2 naps, and suggests that he may not be ready to transition to 1 nap until close to 2. Your priority is therefore to get him back on his old schedule.
 
@knowledgeisnotignorant Okay, my sleep deprived brain wasn’t working. I guess I scrolled to a day he had three naps… he was definitely down to two naps around May 2023, which would make him 9 months. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry.
 
@davidkampisch I see. He should be ready for 1 nap then. I think you guys just went crazy with the wake windows. He seems to be high sleep needs w 14.5 hours of sleep based on his 2 nap schedule, so that’s 9.5 hours of TWT max. They build up a sleep debt going into the transition so a beginner 1-nap schedule will need shorter TWT, like 9 hours. You’re doing 6/5 which is like 11 hours of TWT, so you’re short charging your kiddo by like 2 hours -> your kiddo hates life right now.

I personally found it easiest to do DWT and bedtime by the clock, and nap by wake window based on actual wake time. This is how I did all of them:

DWT: treated all wakings prior w CIO, no light exposure until DWT (go into the room for 10min in the middle of the day and make sure there’s no light creeping in from under the doorframe etc; if he is still sleeping at DWT let him sleep in

Bedtime: usually set it 12 hours before DWT; you can do early bedtimes (1-1.5 hours earlier) up to 3 times a week initially on bad nap days to reset sleep debt; too many early bedtimes can backfire so you’re gonna need to find the appropriate first WW quickly

I’d try first WW of 4-5 hours right now. Always leave your kid 20min after each nap so he can fall back asleep. Never cap this nap. Your goal is 3-4 hours.

If nap is really crappy and you are out of early bedtime “quota”, offer a second nap on 2.5 hours second wake window (give kiddo a full hour in the crib to fall asleep), and cap it so that you can do bedtime 12 hours before DWT.
 
@knowledgeisnotignorant Super helpful. Thank you!!

He was averaging about 13-13.5 hours of sleep on the two nap. We hardly get to 11 hours of sleep at night. He wakes up consistently after 10.5. Any tips on lengthening that? I’m in the constant state if he goes down early he’ll be up early too after he gets to his 10.5.

I’ll work on total darkness too. I bet that little light does seep through. We do block the bottom of the door because I experimented with that light when we wake up around 5:30 AM.

Working around the clock would be ideal for us. We would ideally love at 7:30 DWT and 8 BT.

For the past several days we have left him in there after waking up around the hour mark and he has gone back down for another hour. Sometimes we do talk over the monitor by saying “lay down”. The last two days he has woken up around an hour and 45 minutes in. What would be considered a “crap nap” here?

So I thinkkkkk we’re getting there but we’ll do anything to help. We’re getting around 12.5 TST. Much better than the 9/10 we got around a month ago.
 
@davidkampisch My son gravitated towards 10.5 hour nights before too. His natural equilibrium is still 11 but since he hit 1 he could do 12 hours 1-2 times a week if sleep pressure is really high. So definitely stick to the system that I suggested.

It's great that he can do 2 hours on the nap now. Sounds like you guys can maybe realistically expect 2-3 hours when he really settles out. I'd just make a habit of waiting 15-20min before getting him after the nap, regardless of how long it is. This way you really ensure that he can nap to his heart's content.

FWIW, around this age our system was DWT 8, nap 1230 at daycare (at home we'd offer early, at 4.5-5 hours after actual wake up time which ends up being 1130-12 most times), bedtime 8. We also had to do early bedtimes of 7 2-3 times a week to catch kiddo up because daycare nap was never long enough (1.5 hours was a good day). Now at almost 2 we do DWT 745, nap 1230 at daycare and at home most times now, bedtime 8. We only need to do early bedtime about once a week now. Nap is mostly 1.5-2 hours and nights are 10.5-11.5 hours. It took us a long time to get here though and setbacks happen all the time (illnesses, daylight savings, developmental leaps which happen every 2-3 months). It takes a lot of conviction for me to decide that he needs more sleep because he's very good at convincing people otherwise.
 
@knowledgeisnotignorant Hi! You've helped me so much in the past so here i am again hoping for some tips :)

My baby has always been prone to EMWs, but she's always just chilled in her crib until DWT. We switched to 1 nap a couple of weeks ago, just after she turned 15mo, because she was refusing nap 2, night was getting short, she was waking earlier in the morning after a looooong period of waking at DWT.

Our last schedule on 2 naps was:

- 6.30am DWT (but lately was waking at 5.45/6)

- 10am to 11am Nap 1

- 2.30/245 to 3.30pm Nap 2

- 8pm bedtime (asleep at 8.15pm)

We started the 1 nap transition by pushing out the first nap by 30min every couple of days, and offering a cat nap in the PM. This worked the first 2/3 days then she started refusing the cat nap, so we jumped straight to:

- 6.30am DWT

- 11.30am to 2pm Nap (we wake her 99.9% of the time)

- 7.30pm asleep (in bed by 7.25pm, passes out quickly)

Nights have been ok, some occasional cry outs in her sleep, or some increased restlessness, but nothing major. Her nap crapped out at 90mins a couple of times, but I brought bedtime early by 30min and she managed fine.

Now, 2 weeks into the transition, she's starting to get restless around 5.30am, and waking around 6.10/6.15am. I tried pushing the nap to 11.45am but it crapped out at 1.15pm (after 90min) and night sleep was rocky with lots of cry outs (i did bedtime at 7.20pm that day due to appointments in the PM we couldn't shift).

QUESTION: Should I keep 11.30am-2pm nap for now? Or should i work through the morning tiredness and try and push it to 12pm, for 2h max, hoping the DWT gets closer to 6.30am again?

Or should I just do nothing, and let DST do it's job for me in 2 weeks time (Easter Weekend) so i "magically" shift her schedule to:

- 7am wake

- 12-2.30pm nap

- 8pm bed?

Thank you so much in advance!
 
@anavah Sounds like y’all are doing great w the 1130 nap. I’d just stop waking her—the long nap is her own body’s way of catching up on the sleep debt (which is what’s causing the overnight restlessness).

You’ll know she’s caught up when she stops passing out at bedtime quickly.
 
@knowledgeisnotignorant Do youd let the nap go on up to 3h? Yesterday she woke up herself at the 2h mark, at 1.35pm, so I did bedtime at 7.15pm and she passed out immediately.. but this morning was up at 5.57am :-( so I guess today is a 2 nap day?
 
@anavah Yes, never cal nap right after a nap transition—you need it long to make up for the sleep debt and avoid early bedtime.

I’d try for 1 nap still, but bring nap up to 1030-11 and see what happens. If you get a monster nap do early bedtime. If nap isn’t long enough do a bridging micro nsp.
 
@anavah I put my kiddo down at 3 hours after the first nap and leave him in the crib for the full hour. If he doesn't take it, we move on and bring bedtime up.

I find the key is to put him down early (hence why I do 3 hours WW2). The later you put him down the more likely he ends up in the wake maintenance zone, and can't fall asleep no matter what.

If he doesn't fall asleep, the hour of downtime helps him make it to bedtime without getting too overtired. Keep that last WW very low key. We do a lot of stroller rides even now when the nap isn't too good to help avert meltdowns and avoid too many early bedtimes (which will eventually get you into trouble with wake time shifting early).

You'll need to do some early bedtimes to reduce the sleep debt, but too many can get you into trouble. I'd say 2-3 early bedtimes a week has been fine with us. We did bedtime about 12 hours before DWT (so 8p for 8a DWT), and early bedtime would be like 7p. This is why monster naps are the saving grace and you should never cap them in this setting----you don't end up relying on early bedtimes exclusively for reducing sleep debt.
 
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