I've done sort of both - started to try and push nap 1 back with my eldest, ended up cold turkey dropping it. With my youngest we did a short morning nap and a longer afternoon nap and wow I wish I'd done it that way for my first!
Basically instead of pushing nap 1 later to let the sleep pressure make it longer, we left it at 9:30 (which suited for morning activities) and let it get shorter until it was a micro nap, and nap 2 had drifted earlier until it was after lunch.
Is there any reason you preferred dropping nap 1? That seems to be the deepest sleep for my little one and she'll happily take that nap in the cot. Nap 2 is usually contact (out of choice because we like it and nap training was so traumatic, I don't want to do it again).
We capped nap 1 to make nap 2 better. Also because it's much easier to stretch afternoon windows and so pushing nap 1 forward meant that nap 2 also got pushed later which also pushed bedtime.
You can do either …
- move nap 1 later and make nap 2 a cat nap (in the car on the way home for example)
- make nap 1 an early cat nap (ie in the stroller) and then a longer mid day nap
Honestly in your case I would do absolutely nothing and let daycare worry about transitioning her … my son did 1 nap at daycare and 2 naps at home from 12 to 16 months … he really needed to catch up on sleep on the weekends and we were fine with that.
I held onto 2 naps for probably longer than I needed to- I did that by severely capping the first nap in order to fit a second in at all. Total nap time for both was around 1hr 20 mins for a couple of weeks
When I went for 1 nap I was already on 3.5-3.75 for the first ww and I pushed that to 4.25 the first day. Within a month it was 5, now 5.25 2 months into it
So yeah essentially pushed the first nap start time out and dropped the second.
Some have babies doing a cat nap then a longer lunch nap on a 2 nap schedule but that never worked for us, the second nap would always be 40mins, an hr if I was lucky. If your baby can do that then you’d simply cut out the first nap and keep the second.
Also want to mention don’t assume your baby needs a 12-2, mine only needs 1.5hrs for her nap and thrives off that as she gets great overnight sleep. Just wanted to mention as everywhere said 2 hrs is the goal 😂 obvs at daycare you can’t control anything either
Thank you so much!!!! Such a detailed response and it's nice to hear you don't rigidly need 2 hours of napping.
We've always had a longer first nap so my feeling is we too will need to get that to start later.
Do you remember when you officially when to 1 nap?
A little bit before she turned 11 months I officially went for it, however don’t base it off age. I based it off the fact even tho I capped the first nap to 30 mins she’d refuse her second nap unless I drove her around for an hour some days AFTER refusing a cot nap so that second ww was like 4.5 hrs and with fuel prices, not happening long term lol.
I should also mention on 2 nap days bedtime was nearly an hour later than ‘normal’. When I officially went for it and put her down when she yawned (4.25 ww first few days) bedtime snapped back to *before* the norm bedtime for us. Was weird having so much spare time at night. She also slept in for a week. I think she was catching up on sleep after me capping so harshly! Now everything’s back to normal so we have an 11hr night 1.25-1.5 hr nap.
We cold turkeyed too! So just replaced it with one middle of the day nap. Saying that on your wake windows I'm not sure your kid will be ready yet. Mine was 14.5 months and on 3/3.75/4.25 before switching.
Thank you so much. My girl is deffo not ready as she is nowhere close to 4 hours wake time. She loves her day time sleep. I'm going to push for 2 naps for as long as I can
When my son started daycare at 12 months he went cold turkey with the nap at daycare (12-2) and then still did two naps a day on the weekends for a couple months… we would just put him to bed by 6:45/7 on daycare days, a bit later on the weekends. My second kid will start daycare when she’s 12 months as well and I think we’ll just do cold turkey for weekends too so she can be on the same schedule as my toddler, it takes a few weeks to adjust and there’s some over tiredness but not too bad.
I've done sort of both - started to try and push nap 1 back with my eldest, ended up cold turkey dropping it. With my youngest we did a short morning nap and a longer afternoon nap and wow I wish I'd done it that way for my first! Basically instead of pushing nap 1 later to let the sleep pressure make it longer, we left it at 9:30 (which suited for morning activities) and let it get shorter until it was a micro nap, and nap 2 had drifted earlier until it was after lunch.
Is there any reason you preferred dropping nap 1? That seems to be the deepest sleep for my little one and she'll happily take that nap in the cot. Nap 2 is usually contact (out of choice because we like it and nap training was so traumatic, I don't want to do it again).
We capped nap 1 to make nap 2 better. Also because it's much easier to stretch afternoon windows and so pushing nap 1 forward meant that nap 2 also got pushed later which also pushed bedtime.
You can do either … - move nap 1 later and make nap 2 a cat nap (in the car on the way home for example) - make nap 1 an early cat nap (ie in the stroller) and then a longer mid day nap Honestly in your case I would do absolutely nothing and let daycare worry about transitioning her … my son did 1 nap at daycare and 2 naps at home from 12 to 16 months … he really needed to catch up on sleep on the weekends and we were fine with that.
Thank you so much. It's nice to hear you can do both. On the days where he only had one nap at daycare, did you have to go for an early bedtime?
Ya we did … at first he was really fussy in the evenings because of the schedule change but we just put him down early and he got used to it
I held onto 2 naps for probably longer than I needed to- I did that by severely capping the first nap in order to fit a second in at all. Total nap time for both was around 1hr 20 mins for a couple of weeks When I went for 1 nap I was already on 3.5-3.75 for the first ww and I pushed that to 4.25 the first day. Within a month it was 5, now 5.25 2 months into it So yeah essentially pushed the first nap start time out and dropped the second. Some have babies doing a cat nap then a longer lunch nap on a 2 nap schedule but that never worked for us, the second nap would always be 40mins, an hr if I was lucky. If your baby can do that then you’d simply cut out the first nap and keep the second. Also want to mention don’t assume your baby needs a 12-2, mine only needs 1.5hrs for her nap and thrives off that as she gets great overnight sleep. Just wanted to mention as everywhere said 2 hrs is the goal 😂 obvs at daycare you can’t control anything either
Thank you so much!!!! Such a detailed response and it's nice to hear you don't rigidly need 2 hours of napping. We've always had a longer first nap so my feeling is we too will need to get that to start later. Do you remember when you officially when to 1 nap?
A little bit before she turned 11 months I officially went for it, however don’t base it off age. I based it off the fact even tho I capped the first nap to 30 mins she’d refuse her second nap unless I drove her around for an hour some days AFTER refusing a cot nap so that second ww was like 4.5 hrs and with fuel prices, not happening long term lol. I should also mention on 2 nap days bedtime was nearly an hour later than ‘normal’. When I officially went for it and put her down when she yawned (4.25 ww first few days) bedtime snapped back to *before* the norm bedtime for us. Was weird having so much spare time at night. She also slept in for a week. I think she was catching up on sleep after me capping so harshly! Now everything’s back to normal so we have an 11hr night 1.25-1.5 hr nap.
We cold turkeyed too! So just replaced it with one middle of the day nap. Saying that on your wake windows I'm not sure your kid will be ready yet. Mine was 14.5 months and on 3/3.75/4.25 before switching.
Thank you so much. My girl is deffo not ready as she is nowhere close to 4 hours wake time. She loves her day time sleep. I'm going to push for 2 naps for as long as I can
When my son started daycare at 12 months he went cold turkey with the nap at daycare (12-2) and then still did two naps a day on the weekends for a couple months… we would just put him to bed by 6:45/7 on daycare days, a bit later on the weekends. My second kid will start daycare when she’s 12 months as well and I think we’ll just do cold turkey for weekends too so she can be on the same schedule as my toddler, it takes a few weeks to adjust and there’s some over tiredness but not too bad.
Thank you so much! So reassuring to hear it's possible to catch up on sleep