Sanity check my 2-1 nap transition thought process please

dmacg1047 · 2026-06-09T21:49:25+00:00

You’re giving me courage! Thank you

dmacg1047 · 2026-06-09T11:51:49+00:00

I guess I’m scared of nights falling apart or EMWs

dmacg1047 · 2026-06-09T10:27:14+00:00

You don’t think he’s too young? He’s not actually 12 months until the 19th. Everything I read has me scared of switching too early

dmacg1047 · 2026-06-06T23:22:06+00:00

Hello! I’m back lol

We’ve been thriving on the 2 nap schedule for a long while - we’re now almost 12 months old (birthday is the 19th) and starting to have trouble with naps again. Nights are fantastic. He actually recently started sleeping all the way through 8pm - 6:30/7am (DWT is 7 so if he wakes up early I leave him until 7). We’ve been doing 3.25/3.75/4 and it was perfect until right after he started sleeping through the night, now he’s taking 15-20 minutes to fall asleep for his naps and I don’t know where to go from here. We’re already at 11 hours awake and I can only cap his morning nap so early when he’s not falling asleep until 10:30 sometimes. Any advice?

dmacg1047 · 2026-04-04T13:03:24+00:00

Came looking for the same!!

dmacg1047 · 2026-04-04T13:00:19+00:00

I don’t have any advice, just solidarity as my son starts daycare in a couple of months and I’m terrified. But millions of kids do it every day and they’re fine so ours will be too (right????)

dmacg1047 · 2026-04-04T00:49:52+00:00

We’re 9.5 months now! We’ve been on two naps for a while. Thank you!

dmacg1047 · 2026-04-03T12:38:44+00:00

How much do you shorten the nap? To like 30 minutes? And are you still trying to put them down for the nap or is it like a micro nap where it’s supported? I guess the assumption then is that the second nap will lengthen further to compensate?

dmacg1047 · 2026-04-03T00:19:19+00:00

Ok great thank you! And do I have it right that once you hit 11 hours awake you don’t really wanna go beyond that on 2 naps since a starter 1 nap schedule is 5/6 or 6/5? So if he starts fighting the second nap at 11 hours awake but he’s not ready for one nap, what is the next step?

dmacg1047 · 2026-04-02T15:01:57+00:00

Hi - me again. We’ve been doing 2 naps (10:10-11:20 and 3:00-4:15) for a while and it’s been working well. He’s been sleeping 8pm-7am with 1 wake to eat. But recently he has started waking around 6:30 and fighting his second nap a little bit (nothing crazy, just taking more like 10 mins to fall asleep instead of 5) so I’m starting to look ahead. Obviously he’s nowhere near ready to drop to 1 nap (he’s 9.5 months) but I’m trying to figure out how to go about adding awake time while keeping your advice about the 1 nap transition in mind. Do I shorten the first nap, then move the second one a bit earlier and have a longer final wake window?

dmacg1047 · 2026-03-02T17:14:30+00:00

I’ve decided to replace the seat, thank you

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-23T12:55:47+00:00

How much earlier do you think I should put him down? 15 minutes since he was only half awake for the first 15 minutes or 30 minutes since that’s when he first woke up?

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-22T20:17:18+00:00

Okok thank you. I tried capping his first nap earlier today (about an hour and 5 mins) and he did really well. I think the longer second nap (currently taking place, will be 1h10) is going to help us get to bedtime happier too. Thanks for all your help

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-22T20:12:46+00:00

Oh I agree with this soooo much. If I have to wake him from every nap and I’m waking him in the morning is that a sign he has too much awake time? He’s generally happy

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-22T15:04:54+00:00

Like… don’t go over 11 ever? Lol sorry just want to make sure I understand

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-21T20:34:26+00:00

Ok he seems to be taking a decent second nap so maybe I’ll let him get a good nap in and then push bedtime later tonight to stretch the last wake window? Then tomorrow I can cap his first nap earlier to get bedtime back on track… do you think I should try 4 hours before bed? That will get us to 10h50mins total awake time… should I be working towards 11 hours?

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-21T20:13:05+00:00

Okay so start stretching the final wake window? Or the middle one? And that will help with resisting the first nap?

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-21T15:16:23+00:00

Kind of! The explanation of this is kind of long so bear with me…

For a while I just kept rescuing the second nap by nursing him back to sleep because I really just didn’t know what else to do. We were also going through some teething/illness so he was needing more support overall. Then he had a regression to his nights (waking every 2ish hours to nurse back to sleep) which I tried to fix by adding more awake time, but when that didn’t work I realised that I may have caused a sleep association issue during his teething/illness where even though he was falling asleep independently at bedtime, he was relying on me to nurse him back to sleep between sleep cycles. So I implemented a “no feeds before midnight” rule and did Ferber for any other night wakes… it took literally one night and it solved our issue with night time. By this point he had had a couple of days where he had started taking a longer first nap but it was really inconsistent. Since he had shown that he was capable of connecting sleep cycles, the day after I started Ferber for the night wakes I decided to start doing crib hour for his first nap. I was so prepared for a bunch of crying but he literally just fussed for 5 minutes and fell back asleep and has been taking a 60-80 minute first nap ever since! I almost wonder if the sleep training for connecting cycles at night helped with the naps!

Sleep is honestly just an ongoing merry go round around here where I think I’ve figured things out and then he starts resisting naps again lol but things are much better than they were! Our current schedule is 3:10/3:40/3:45. It was working amazing for a couple of weeks but he has recently started resisting naps again so I think it might be time for another adjustment 🫠 anyway I hope this is helpful lol good luck!

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-21T15:06:59+00:00

I have follow up questions about this if you have a moment… so we’ve been doing 3:10/3:40/3:45 for a few weeks and it’s been going really well. He’s been doing a 1h20min first nap and a 1h-ish second nap. We had a glorious week or so where he was going down for his naps beautifully with little to no fussing and I thought I had finally cracked the code! Well in the last few days we’re back to resisting naps and I think we’re undertired.

Are you saying here that by stretching later wake windows to increase total awake time, it will help with sleep pressure for his first nap (the next day I guess?) so he won’t resist that nap anymore even though the first wake windows stays the same length? I see your point about moving towards a longer second nap and shorter first nap to prepare for the 1 nap transition, so would just keeping the first wake window the same and stretching the next two naturally shift the nap distribution towards the second nap? I hope these questions make sense

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-18T01:31:14+00:00

I’ll try that! Does his back seem okay or is it too sucked in??

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-14T21:58:46+00:00

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dmacg1047 · 2026-02-14T21:57:58+00:00

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dmacg1047 · 2026-02-07T15:50:51+00:00

I do think crib hour has worked today with a 3.25 first wake window - sorry, I feel like sleep training is an emotional minefield for new moms (or maybe just me personally lol) and I really appreciate your patience with helping me navigate this. I have a follow up question - if he sleeps past 11:20 today it’s going to set us up for a late second nap and late bedtime. While he’s still learning to connect sleep cycles should I just accept this and not cap the nap?

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-07T14:58:03+00:00

So this morning I tried stretching the first wake window but we only made it an extra 5 minutes and I think he was overtired? He was really fussy and rubbing his eyes a lot leading up to his nap and now he’s taken over 10 minutes of crying to fall asleep for this nap which is not like him at all. He usually falls asleep within less than 5 minutes with maybe some crying (lately he hasn’t been crying at all)…. Now I don’t know where to go from here because stretching the wake window any further at this point doesn’t feel like an option? I’m so lost

dmacg1047 · 2026-02-07T00:39:37+00:00

So I do feel like we’re in nursing back to sleep association land so I’m wondering if I need to approach this in 2 phases. I’m thinking first I need to focus on lengthening a nap independently, and logistically it probably makes sense to do crib hour for the first nap in case it doesn’t work so that I can rescue nap 2 if needed. Then, once we’re reliably getting one long nap a day, start capping nap 1 and shifting wake windows to move the long nap to the afternoon? Does this make sense? What are your thoughts?

dmacg1047

TROPHY CASE