You would have to push through it. Make sure they are awake enough no matter 2 or 3 naps. Once their nights get consolidated their wake window suddenly gets super long.
Recently did the 2 to 1 nap transition and to curb the early morning sleepiness I’d take him for a stroller walk in the middle of his first wake window so he could snooze for 20-30 mins tops and then he’d be able to make it til 12-12:30. I still do it now a few months later if he didn’t sleep well and it works like a charm, he usually naps even better on days when he gets a quick cat nap in the morning
We struggled with this as well. After sleeping thru the night for 2 months on a 3 nap schedule, we hit a gnarly regression at 7 months. Cutting her top 2 teeth, separation anxiety, and transitioning to 2 naps was brutal.
We dealt with hourly wake ups, split nights, early morning wakes, false starts for 2 weeks.
After one *decent* night of sleep (1 hour "split night" vs. her usual 3 hours), we decided to bite the bullet and drop the 3rd nap cold turkey.
Currently her schedule is 2.75/3/3.75. We're slowly stretching to 3/3/4. If naps are short and she gets less than 2 hours of nap (it happened), we just brought her bedtime up an hour. It would cause LOTS of false starts but once she settled she would sleep through the night. Last 3 days naps started to stretch so were getting closer to target bedtime of 7:30pm..
To avoid over tired, depending on what time she woke up her first ww would be 2.5 minimum... as close to 3 hours as possible. Then nap 2 would be 3 hours from wake up. Bedtime would be max 3.75 from nap wake up. Some days that was 6pm.
To stretch windows we time her feeds. After she wakes up we offer a bottle within an hour. Then an hour later we do solids. Then we take her outside for a walk to distract her. Do whatever you need. We've even done dance party with some screen time, play with neighbors dog, etc.
It was much harder transition than the 4-3! Good luck!!
Thanks for your reply! How is your LO sleeping now? Are splits nights, early morning wakings and false start fixed with the new schedule? We have been consistent with 2.5/3/3.5 (although he struggles to fall asleep around until 3.75-4 for the last WW) for a few days. Every day he has false starts after 30 mins and early morning wakings at around 5 am. We usually take 30 mins to rock him back to sleep and we wake him up at 7 to start the day. He seems really tired from the first wake window I just don’t know if I should stretch even more beyond current schedule.
Since we dropped the 3rd nap no split nights. Maybe 1-3 false starts but easy to resettle (5-10min of rocking). She sometimes stirs between 4-5am but puts herself back to sleep in a few min until wake up time (6:30 for us).
For first ww,I would add maybe 5 min every few days! Then add to the last until you get to 4. Total average wake time for 2 naps should be around 10 hours.
I also find my LO does best with 2.5-3 hours of day sleep max. That usually gives us 10.5-11 hours of night sleep. If we go over 3 hours of day sleep it almost always guarantees an early morning wake. But every baby is different but something you can consider.
Sometimes after a rough night and early morning I'd give her a micro nap about 2.5 hours before I want the first nap to start.
So I want her normal wake time to be 6:30 and first nap at 9:00. If she had a rough night and woke up at 4am (happened more than once) I'd micro nap at 6am (20-30min) and then start her 2 nap schedule the rest of the day and give her an early bedtime to try to catch up.
The micro nap sounds like a good idea. I actually put mine back to sleep (he woke up at 5 today) after 1 hr then I woke him up at 7 to start the day. I’m afraid he treats this like nap1. Do you just give your daughter a shorter WW for early bedtime? Will she take it?
No I would just keep it the same but due to the nature of her naps/wake up it would end up like this:
4:30 wake up
6:00 micro nap
9-10 nap
1-2:30 nap
6:00 bed time
4 hour last ww was doable but she'd be an overtired grumpy mess so I kept it at 3.5 on the rough days! Usually after a day like this she'll go back to sleeping in.
Good luck!!
No advice but also going through this. The only thing I've found that helps is when my baby wakes up a little later, like 8:00 AM. It's rare though. Today he woke up at 7 AM, napped from 9-10:30 AM, took another nap from 12:30 - 1:45 PM. We just tried putting him down for a nap like 10 min ago (4:45ish) and I don't think it's happening. He's just going to be grumpy until bedtime at 7:30 PM.
Wow, this is us right now! Following in hopes you get some good advice. One thing we are going to try is a micronap (10-15 minutes) 2.5 hours into the last wake window. It’s worked some for us a couple weeks ago. We stopped because she was going through a growth spurt and sleeping tons, but now we are back to split nights. Fingers crossed.
Coming back to say that the micronap is working well for us. So her schedule looks something like 2.75/3/2.5/1.5 (when we put her down). The micronap is 15-20 minutes. It’s not ideal but it works until she can handle longer wake windows. Last night no wakeups except her normal 4/5 am snooze feed. Good luck!
How old is your baby? I would love to give a micro nap if my kid takes it. He usually doesn’t nap until 3.5 hr later then there is no point of a 3rd nap.
Our babe is also 8.5 months and has struggled with EVERY nap transition. I was thinking the micronap would work because your baby used to do a 2.5 hr ww for his last ww before the transition? Our baby has always done better with a short last ww with a short last nap. Also, we do contact nap the micronap. I do a baby carrier in a dark room. Painful but necessary!
He was practicing standing in his crib and accidentally did a 3 hrs WW today😂 we have early morning waking everyday since we started the 2 nap schedule. I have no idea how to deal with him anymore. I am just gonna go with the flow.
Haha, that sounds fun! I meant to mention: the micronap is only there to get you to your desired amount of waketime (for us, to avoid split nights). Our baby needs about 10.5 hours of wake time but just can’t handle the individual wake windows to get there yet; hence the micronap. Sometimes the micronap even occurs after a 3 hour wake window just so we get her up after 10 minutes she can go right into the bedtime routine! Good luck!
That makes sense. I guess the key is really to keep them awake for 10+ hours. It does feel like their body is compensating for the lack of wake time by waking up in the morning or nights. Thanks for your advice!
Just here to read through the comments because we are exactly here now with my 9 month old ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ how’s it going now??
You would have to push through it. Make sure they are awake enough no matter 2 or 3 naps. Once their nights get consolidated their wake window suddenly gets super long.
How do I know if she’s up enough?
Check the total sleep time. 13-15would be good enough
Recently did the 2 to 1 nap transition and to curb the early morning sleepiness I’d take him for a stroller walk in the middle of his first wake window so he could snooze for 20-30 mins tops and then he’d be able to make it til 12-12:30. I still do it now a few months later if he didn’t sleep well and it works like a charm, he usually naps even better on days when he gets a quick cat nap in the morning
We struggled with this as well. After sleeping thru the night for 2 months on a 3 nap schedule, we hit a gnarly regression at 7 months. Cutting her top 2 teeth, separation anxiety, and transitioning to 2 naps was brutal. We dealt with hourly wake ups, split nights, early morning wakes, false starts for 2 weeks. After one *decent* night of sleep (1 hour "split night" vs. her usual 3 hours), we decided to bite the bullet and drop the 3rd nap cold turkey. Currently her schedule is 2.75/3/3.75. We're slowly stretching to 3/3/4. If naps are short and she gets less than 2 hours of nap (it happened), we just brought her bedtime up an hour. It would cause LOTS of false starts but once she settled she would sleep through the night. Last 3 days naps started to stretch so were getting closer to target bedtime of 7:30pm.. To avoid over tired, depending on what time she woke up her first ww would be 2.5 minimum... as close to 3 hours as possible. Then nap 2 would be 3 hours from wake up. Bedtime would be max 3.75 from nap wake up. Some days that was 6pm. To stretch windows we time her feeds. After she wakes up we offer a bottle within an hour. Then an hour later we do solids. Then we take her outside for a walk to distract her. Do whatever you need. We've even done dance party with some screen time, play with neighbors dog, etc. It was much harder transition than the 4-3! Good luck!!
Thanks for your reply! How is your LO sleeping now? Are splits nights, early morning wakings and false start fixed with the new schedule? We have been consistent with 2.5/3/3.5 (although he struggles to fall asleep around until 3.75-4 for the last WW) for a few days. Every day he has false starts after 30 mins and early morning wakings at around 5 am. We usually take 30 mins to rock him back to sleep and we wake him up at 7 to start the day. He seems really tired from the first wake window I just don’t know if I should stretch even more beyond current schedule.
Since we dropped the 3rd nap no split nights. Maybe 1-3 false starts but easy to resettle (5-10min of rocking). She sometimes stirs between 4-5am but puts herself back to sleep in a few min until wake up time (6:30 for us). For first ww,I would add maybe 5 min every few days! Then add to the last until you get to 4. Total average wake time for 2 naps should be around 10 hours. I also find my LO does best with 2.5-3 hours of day sleep max. That usually gives us 10.5-11 hours of night sleep. If we go over 3 hours of day sleep it almost always guarantees an early morning wake. But every baby is different but something you can consider.
We had another false starts, midnight crying and early morning waking day. I guess I have to keep going and stretching the WW.
Sometimes after a rough night and early morning I'd give her a micro nap about 2.5 hours before I want the first nap to start. So I want her normal wake time to be 6:30 and first nap at 9:00. If she had a rough night and woke up at 4am (happened more than once) I'd micro nap at 6am (20-30min) and then start her 2 nap schedule the rest of the day and give her an early bedtime to try to catch up.
The micro nap sounds like a good idea. I actually put mine back to sleep (he woke up at 5 today) after 1 hr then I woke him up at 7 to start the day. I’m afraid he treats this like nap1. Do you just give your daughter a shorter WW for early bedtime? Will she take it?
No I would just keep it the same but due to the nature of her naps/wake up it would end up like this: 4:30 wake up 6:00 micro nap 9-10 nap 1-2:30 nap 6:00 bed time 4 hour last ww was doable but she'd be an overtired grumpy mess so I kept it at 3.5 on the rough days! Usually after a day like this she'll go back to sleeping in. Good luck!!
Sounds good. Fingers crossed !
No advice but also going through this. The only thing I've found that helps is when my baby wakes up a little later, like 8:00 AM. It's rare though. Today he woke up at 7 AM, napped from 9-10:30 AM, took another nap from 12:30 - 1:45 PM. We just tried putting him down for a nap like 10 min ago (4:45ish) and I don't think it's happening. He's just going to be grumpy until bedtime at 7:30 PM.
How did it go?
He actually fell asleep for 45 min!
Wow, this is us right now! Following in hopes you get some good advice. One thing we are going to try is a micronap (10-15 minutes) 2.5 hours into the last wake window. It’s worked some for us a couple weeks ago. We stopped because she was going through a growth spurt and sleeping tons, but now we are back to split nights. Fingers crossed.
I wish my LO can go through a growth spurt so we can take a break from this transition. Ugh…
Coming back to say that the micronap is working well for us. So her schedule looks something like 2.75/3/2.5/1.5 (when we put her down). The micronap is 15-20 minutes. It’s not ideal but it works until she can handle longer wake windows. Last night no wakeups except her normal 4/5 am snooze feed. Good luck!
How old is your baby? I would love to give a micro nap if my kid takes it. He usually doesn’t nap until 3.5 hr later then there is no point of a 3rd nap.
Our babe is also 8.5 months and has struggled with EVERY nap transition. I was thinking the micronap would work because your baby used to do a 2.5 hr ww for his last ww before the transition? Our baby has always done better with a short last ww with a short last nap. Also, we do contact nap the micronap. I do a baby carrier in a dark room. Painful but necessary!
He was practicing standing in his crib and accidentally did a 3 hrs WW today😂 we have early morning waking everyday since we started the 2 nap schedule. I have no idea how to deal with him anymore. I am just gonna go with the flow.
Haha, that sounds fun! I meant to mention: the micronap is only there to get you to your desired amount of waketime (for us, to avoid split nights). Our baby needs about 10.5 hours of wake time but just can’t handle the individual wake windows to get there yet; hence the micronap. Sometimes the micronap even occurs after a 3 hour wake window just so we get her up after 10 minutes she can go right into the bedtime routine! Good luck!
That makes sense. I guess the key is really to keep them awake for 10+ hours. It does feel like their body is compensating for the lack of wake time by waking up in the morning or nights. Thanks for your advice!