Both Charlie and Olive transitioned very easily from 3 naps to 2 when they were 8 months old. Charlie then transitioned to one nap when he was 15 months old, and we recently tried to transition 15-month old Olive to 1 nap as well. I thought I would share our experiences on the 2-1 nap transition because it was pretty easy for Charlie, while we ultimately found out that Olive just wasn’t ready yet.

Most toddlers transition to one nap between 15-18 months. At 15 months, Charlie was able to stay awake longer and longer between his naps and it kept pushing his bedtime later, so we decided to push him to one nap even though he probably could have gone on taking 2 naps for a little while longer.

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This was Charlie’s 2 nap schedule at 15 months:

6:30am – Wake up
9:00am – 10:00am – Nap #1
2:00pm – 3:00pm – Nap #2
7:30pm – Bedtime
Total Sleep: 13 hours

We pushed him to the following 1 nap schedule:

6:30am – Wake up
12:00pm – 3:30pm – Nap
7:30pm – Bedtime
Total Sleep: 14.5 hours

Charlie actually got more sleep consolidating his two naps into one because he was able to take 1 long nap instead of 2 short naps. Dropping a nap doesn’t mean that your child is getting less sleep… it just means their sleep gets reorganized and they may get the same amount or even more sleep.

As long as we did something super active in the mornings instead of just staying home, Charlie was able to handle the extended awake time in the mornings pretty well. We just had to make sure that we weren’t in the stroller for too long close to naptime, otherwise he’d pass out. If we were in the stroller, we had to make him walk, talk to him, or give him snacks to keep him up until we got home.

We pushed his awake time 30 minutes each day until he was eventually napping at 12pm instead of 9am. Some days he was extra tired and couldn’t make it past 10am or 11am, and on those days we just let him nap early. Because he always took super long naps (3+hours), we never needed to go back to 2 naps even on the days that he took an early nap. But when your child is making the transition, some days you may need two naps and some days you may need one. On days when Charlie took an earlier nap, we just moved up his bedtime to 4 hours after he woke up from his last nap. I’ve read that bedtime should be 4-5 hours after the last nap to prevent overtiredness (preferably closer to 4 hours), and until pretty recently Charlie was on that schedule. Now that he’s a little bit older, he’s awake 5 hours before bedtime.

It took a couple weeks before we were on the 12pm nap schedule consistently. Eventually his body adjusted, and his naps started at 1pm which is when most kids on a 1 nap schedule take their naps.

Anything can affect a child’s sleep, including teething, sickness, travel, change in routine, working on a milestone, dropping a nap… so sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause of a change in sleep. I’ve found that it’s been a lot of trial and error when it comes to Charlie and Olive’s sleep; nothing is ever a sure bet or a constant, and what worked for Charlie doesn’t necessarily work for Olive.

It could have been the change in routine over the holidays, but that’s about when Olive started fighting and skipping naps. Since we nap trained her at 8 months, we’ve been so protective of her sleep, I can’t even remember a time that she skipped a single nap! But now she was rolling around for 30 minutes or longer before falling asleep, or we’d eventually have to stop a nap because she just wasn’t falling asleep. When a baby takes a long time to fall asleep, they may be overtired or not tired enough. I knew Olive wasn’t overtired because she’s been on the same schedule for the past 5 months, so I experimented with extending her awake intervals by 15 minutes at a time. For instance she’s usually awake 2 1/2 hours before her first nap, so I extended it to 2 hours 45 minutes, and then 3 hours. But that didn’t improve her naps.

I didn’t think she was ready to transition to one nap because she’s always been a much sleepier child than Charlie, but naps had been such a battle we decided to give it a try. Some signs that your little one might be ready to drop a nap include fighting naps, taking a long time to fall asleep, and taking short naps. Olive was doing all of those things.

Her two nap schedule was as follows:

8:00am – Wake up
11:00am – 12:30am Nap 1 (1 1/2 hour)
3:30pm – 4:30pm Nap 2 (1 hour)
7:30pm – Bedtime
Total Sleep: 15 hours

Olive has always been a late riser that sleeps a lot at night. And since she was already able to stay awake 3 hours before her first nap, we only had to keep her awake one hour longer in the morning to try a one nap schedule. Ideally this is what it would have looked like:

8:00am – Wake up
12:00pm – 3:00pm Nap
7:00pm – Bedtime
Total Sleep: 16 hours

The first couple of days went pretty well, but the sleep deficit soon caught up. Her longest naps were 2 hours, but sometimes they’d only be an hour long, so she’d either be overtired or have a super early bedtime.  And then because she was overtired, she started waking up earlier at 6-7am instead of her usual 8am, which made it tougher for her to stay up that long stretch before her morning nap. The overtiredness also translated into night wakings, so we knew that she wasn’t ready to make the transition and went back to two naps after trying the 1 nap schedule for a week. She’s sleeping much better now and it’s obvious that she still needs 2 naps. Once she starts showing signs that she’s ready to drop her morning nap, we’ll give it another try.

When Charlie dropped his morning nap, we were pretty devastated, especially because he was an early riser. Losing that morning break was tough and at first we were exhausted. But then our entire mornings were now free so we were able to do so many more fun things together. With Olive, I can’t wait until she drops her second nap because she’s on a different schedule than Charlie and takes all her naps in her crib. Having them both on a similar schedule would be so much easier because we’d be free to do a lot more things together. Some kids don’t drop their second nap until as late as 2, and I hope that isn’t the case with Olive!

Were dropping naps an easy or difficult transition for your little one?