Asher’s Transition to 1 Nap a Day
I’m going to start off this story by giving a little background on what Asher’s naps and nights looked like over the last few months, so that way, we can see how he has progressed/changed over time.
At around 9-10 months old, Asher would always start his morning between 6:30 and 6:50. If he woke up earlier, I would leave him in bed until at minimum, 6:30. His naps would be at 9:45-11/11:15 and at 2:15-3:30; bedtime was between 6:30-7.
At some point, maybe just before he was 11 months, he began fighting that second nap. He wouldn’t fall asleep easily at all. Sometimes he would just lay there quietly and doze off 15-20 minutes later, sometimes he would cry until falling asleep. Regardless, the actual time he spent sleeping would only be 30-40 minutes.
I pushed his second nap to being later, at 3 pm (though sometimes, I’d lay him down a little earlier – 2:45 – if I saw he was cranky/extra tired), and bedtime to being between 7 and 7:30. And this worked great for us!
About 1.5 weeks after his 1st birthday, a couple things began to happen. Asher started napping longer than usual for his morning nap. Whereas his naps used to be 1.15/1.5 hours long, they now started being 2.5-3 hours long. I definitely wasn’t complaining though because that left me with tons of time to get things done. But because of that lengthy nap, his second nap would be pushed a little bit later and I would have to cap it at 30/45 minutes. Bedtime was usually 7:30 (sometimes even 7:45) at that point.
The other thing that started happening a few days after this, Asher started sleeping later and later each morning. Now this I definitely was not complaining about! It started with him sleeping until 7:15, and then 7:30, and then 8, and one morning until 8:30. Trust me guys, I loved it, but I knew it wouldn’t last. It had to be developmental, perhaps a growth spurt. I was all for it, but I knew to not get used to it!
I have to pause here and say – I know I usually recommend starting your day with baby at the same time every day, and you’re probably wondering why I didn’t follow my own advice. Honestly, at this point, I was going with my gut. I knew it was temporary, that for whatever reason, he needed more sleep. I did end up being right. This lasted for just over one week (9 days to be exact)! Probably the best sleep week of my mom life!
I decided since he was already napping for a lengthy period of time for the first nap (one of the signs we see before the 2à1 nap transition), and he was waking later, I would use this time to transition him to 1 nap a day.
Even though Asher was starting his day around 8 in the morning, every day like clockwork, by 10 am he was already tired (remember the body clock). So every couple days (just like noted in this blog), I pushed him just a little bit more and more to get that first nap to start happening later and later.
Truthfully, he was cranky every day during those times when I had to force him to stay awake until nap time. I gave him some fruit, had some dance parties, and took him outside on walks. All that definitely helped to get him through the morning. But I will say that the length of this nap began to vary and has continued to vary. Some days were great with 2-3 hour stretches, and other days he was up after 1 hour or 1.5.
This just goes to show that it is NORMAL for nap times to vary right now as he is settling into this new normal of falling asleep for his nap at 11:45 am every day. I can tell you off the top of my head that at the time of this writing, the timing of the last 6 days of naps were 3, 1.15, 1.5, 2, 1, and 2.5 hours.
Whenever he would wake up within 1.5 hours of falling asleep, I would give him 15-20 minutes to try to fall back asleep. Some days he did, but other days he didn’t.
In the beginning, I continued offering a second nap, but he wouldn’t always fall asleep, and even if he did, I couldn’t let it go on too long or it would interfere with bedtime. About a week into the transition, I stopped offering it.
It was definitely also a stretch for him to get used to being awake for this long before bedtime so there were times when he was cranky by 5 pm. Going on walks, food, and being entertained by family were all tools I used to get him to pull through until bedtime. Honestly though, there were a few times I missed the mark and he ended up in bed overtired and with a harder time falling asleep. It was a bit of trial and error on my part. But fortunately, his night sleep was never affected.
Our day now looks like this: Asher wakes typically between 7 and 7:15; I put him down at 11:40 and don’t take him out until at minimum 1:30. Bedtime is now between 6:15 and 7. On the early side if the nap was fairly short, and later if he napped over 2.5 hours.
Overall, the transition period wasn’t so bad. He still hasn’t settled into consistently napping the same amount each day, but he is used to being awake for longer periods of time. I do suspect that it will be another few weeks before his whole day is stabilized, but so far, this is working for us!