3 to 2 Nap Transition

Nap transitions are always hard. Any change in your child’s schedule is always hard as it takes some time for both the parents and the child to get used to. With any transition, you have to give your child some time to adjust to the new wake windows, and sometimes less day sleep.

Your child may start showing resistance to 3 naps anywhere between the ages of 8-9 months old. That 3rd nap of the day, which is often a catnap, becomes a struggle and they begin fighting it more and more. That last nap has been there to help bridge the wake window to bedtime. In the transition phase, there will be times where they’ll skip that nap altogether and then they are awake far too long, which can cause them to be overtired.  And then there will be times when your child isn’t resisting the third nap, but rather falling asleep much later, which can also affect bedtime, pushing it really late. Many times you are in that limbo state that I like to call “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”  If your child does take that third nap can often mean a later bedtime. But if your child doesn’t take that third nap, you want to avoid pushing those wake windows too much and are looking at an earlier bedtime.

How do you know your child is ready to drop to 2 naps?

•  Your baby is between the ages of 8-9 months: You want to make sure your little one is between the ages of 8-9 months old before you do the transition. Changing your child’s schedule too early, can affect her sleep, as she’s not ready to stretch those wake windows too far and can’t handle only 2 naps a day.

• Sleeping 11 hours through the night: In order for your child to be able to stay up longer throughout the day, you want to make sure she is rested and sleeping all night. If your little one isn’t sleeping well at night, often they will need day sleep to recover, so dropping a nap will only make your little one more overtired.

• Taking longer to fall asleep: In this case, your little one will end falling asleep, but it’s a struggle. You’ll leave her in there and she will fall asleep, but it will take her a long time to fall asleep, which will then push bedtime even later.

• Resisting that 3rd nap: Where your little one normally would fall asleep without any problems, you are now seeing her completely resist that first nap. Your baby won’t nap at all even though you have kept her in her crib for the full hour.

• Too much day sleep affecting bedtime/night sleep: In this case, your child is napping 3x a day, but seems to be getting too much overall day sleep, and now that has either pushed bedtime too late, or has taken away from overall night sleep.

How to make the transition:

• Extend wake windows: While this is sometimes the hardest and scariest thing to do, you will need to start pushing those wake windows larger because she can handle it. A lot of times we are scared to do this, as we should be, but when they can handle it, we must do it. Remember that at this age, her wake window is 3-3.5 hours.

• Allow for longer naps: In this transition period, you want your little one to get in as much day sleep as she can within those 2 naps, without letting her exceed the total amount needed in one day. At this age your little one should not be napping 3 hours total (maximum), so if she does take 2 excellent naps, this will help her stay up longer intervals and avoid that 3rd nap.

• 3:00 p.m. rule: If your little one wakes up from her second nap at 3:00 p.m. or later, it is recommended to skip the 3rd nap and move bedtime earlier. If she wakes up before 3:00 p.m., she will need a small late afternoon catnap, even if it’s only for 20/30 minutes.

• Push bedtime earlier: On the days where your child doesn’t take her 3rd nap, remember to move bedtime earlier. Since your little one is old enough to handle 3 to even 3.5 hours of a wake window at the end of the day, you will move bedtime to 6/6:30 p.m. and end the day then.

• Give it time: Remember, with all transitions, this can take a few days, even weeks. Remember that she is adjusting her body to only take 2 naps a day and to be able to handle larger wake windows. We need to be patient and consistent more importantly, and continue with the pace as your child will soon get adjusted to the new wake windows, and less overall day sleep. The more consistent you are, the sooner it will click.

Are you struggling with your little one’s nap transition? Let’s talk!

How Can I Get My Baby To Nap Longer?

Short naps can be very frustrating. But they don’t have to be that way! Your little one needs a nap until she’s about 3-4 years old, and we don’t want her catnapping for so long! Now that you know what can cause short naps, let’s go over a few tips and suggestions you can do to extend that nap.  

Create a routine: It’s recommended to have a nap time routine with your little one. This helps signal your child it’s time to go to sleep and helps them wind down from play time to sleep time. A few books and some songs before going down is a great way to help her wind down.

Sleep space: It is suggested to have your baby sleeping in her regular sleep space for naps as well. Studies show that sleeping in the same space daily is a healthy sleep habit that promotes better sleep overall. Make sure the room is dark, so close those shades! And make sure the room is quiet and perhaps use a white noise machine to drown out that exterior noise that’s going on during the day in the house that can cause wake ups.

 Awake window: This is the amount of time our little one can stay up before they enter their sleep window. Once they enter their sleep window, they start secreting melatonin, which is a calming soothing hormone that helps them get sleepy and fall asleep. If we miss that sleep window, and our child is still awake, but they have entered the overtired state and are secreting cortisol. Make sure to put your child down according to their awake window so they don’t get overtired and cause short naps. Don’t try to keep them up ‘as long as he can handle’ and stretch the window to ‘get in a longer nap because he’s so tired.’

 Sleep Crutch: If you are doing something to or for your little one, she will need it to go back to sleep. These are known as sleep crutches, or sleep associations. Look at your routine and make sure that you are not ending it with having your child falling asleep in your arms or at the bottle. Once you are done with the routine, place your child in her sleep space awake and let her put herself to sleep.

 Extra crib time: If your little one isn’t completing a full sleep cycle (naps less than 45 minutes), you want to try to leave her in her crib and give her some time to fall back asleep. Once she can put herself to sleep, she will be able to put herself back to sleep and connect those sleep cycles. It is recommended to leave her in the crib for an extra 30 minutes to see if she goes back to sleep.

Have questions about your little one’s naps? Let’s talk!

Why Does My Child Take Short Naps?

Putting your little one down to take a nap, only to have her wake up 30 minutes later, can be very frustrating! Our babies don’t get the amount of sleep they need, and as parents we start worrying. Catnaps are naps that are anything less than 45 minutes. They are not considered restorative sleep, as she only stays in the “light sleep” part and doesn’t really enter the “deep sleep” phase. While she’ll wake up and seem like she’s ready to go on about her day, the nap didn’t allow her to fully rest and get the amount of sleep she needs.  

What can cause a short nap?

Age: Day sleep doesn’t start consolidating until your baby is closer to 5-6 months old. If your baby is under the age of 5 months, it is normal for her to have short, inconsistent naps. Newborns aren’t able to connect through the sleep cycles, which causes frequent wake ups and short naps. As they get older, their brain develops, and they are able to connect between sleep cycles and take longer and restorative naps.

Overtired: Have you kept her up too long? Are you trying to stretch her awake window far beyond she can handle? A lot of parents think that if they keep their baby up longer, she’ll be more tired and will sleep longer. But this is a big myth! When they are awake for too long and have passed their awake window, they are now overtired. Why? When we keep our baby up longer than their awake window, they start secreting cortisol instead of melatonin. Their bodies start getting a second wind and when you try to put them down to nap later, it will be harder for them to get into a deep sleep with cortisol kicking.

Undertired: The term ‘undertired’, as opposed to overtired, is when your baby is not tired enough or ready to take a nap. In this case, she may fall asleep, but because she doesn’t have enough sleep pressure to help her extend her nap, she will wake up sooner. Sleep pressure is an unconscious biological response that makes us want to go to sleep, a result of adenosine building up in our brains during the time we are awake. It builds up as our time awake increases, and then it decreases as we sleep.   

Environment: Is the room dark enough? You also want to make sure that the room isn’t too bright, so close the shades and make sure the room is dark. Too much light can be distracting and can also stop the production of melatonin. Make sure the room is quiet and perhaps use a white noise machine to avoid any loud noises waking her up.

Sleep Crutches: If you are doing something to or for your child to help her fall asleep at the beginning of the nap, she will need you to help her when she wakes up mid-nap. She will not be able to connect the sleep cycles on her own, will have a partial awakening, and then will wake up and not be able to go back to sleep without your help.

Dropping The Nap

This summer the time came for my third, and last child to drop his nap. Dropping the nap is always the hardest for the child and the parent. This was the time I would do phone calls, work, clean up the house, or even just take a break and eat a meal and shower. The truth is once my eldest dropped his nap almost 6 years ago, it’s never been the same, you’re “on” the whole day! But somehow this time around, I guess I was more resistant, maybe cause he’s #babyj.

The decision came two-fold; he’s over the age of 3, and he’ll be starting full day school now in August. Unfortunately, our school doesn’t allow for naps at this age, so it was time to remove. Also, I started to see the signs that he was sorta ready; not wanting to go to sleep (but eventually did fall asleep much later), and bedtime started getting later and later.

So how do you know when your child is ready to drop the nap?

1.     He is between the ages of 3-4 years old.

2.     He is fighting the nap.

3.     Taking longer and longer to fall asleep, which leads to a later naptime.

4.     Completely refuses the nap all together – even after leaving him in the crib for a full hour.

5.     Bedtime has now become an issue, where he is not ready to sleep and/or falling asleep much later and later (because nap started too late).

How do you remove the nap?

· Don’t go cold turkey: It’s very hard for your child to go from nap to no nap. Going 12 hour days can become exhausting and they will need a nap every so often to catch up.

· Shorten nap: If your child is falling asleep, just doing it later, make sure to cut the nap short. Don’t allow your child to take a 2-hour nap starting at 2:00 as that will definitely push bedtime much later. Wake him up after 45 minutes.

· Catch up naps: Offer a nap every other day so that your child can catch up on sleep. The full days can affect your child’s mood and they will get too tired and cranky. A nap every so often will help him feel rested.

· Quiet time replaces nap: If your child is no longer napping at all, he will still need some downtime. Have your child lay in his crib/bed for some quiet time every day. He can read books or play quietly (with legos, coloring books, or any calm activity), but the idea is that he is alone, in a quiet, non-stimulating space. TV and Ipad’s are not suggested. Quiet time doesn’t need to last a full hour, but even if it’s a few minutes (15-30 a day) it can really help him.

· Move bedtime earlier: When your toddler was napping, bedtime was probably closer to 8:00 p.m. or so. Now that he will no longer be napping, you will find that the afternoons will a little bit of a struggle. Do your best to get the evening routine done a little sooner and have him in bed earlier. By early I mean, anywhere between 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Once your child is used to being awake the whole day, and is a little older, you can then adjust bedtime to later.

Remember: Removing the nap so he “can sleep longer and better at night” is FALSE. This can actually create the opposite effect. Also, make sure your child is completely refusing and showing signs of dropping his nap for about 1-2 weeks before you remove it completely.

Is Your Child Ready To Transition To One Nap?

I decided that for this month’s post I would write what my 16-month-old son just went through this past month – transitioning from two naps to one. Going through nap transitions are very hard! It’s the period that I like to call “damn if you do, damn if you don’t.” One nap is often times too little, but two naps are too much. So I felt like it might be helpful for you, if I shared a few tips on knowing when your child is ready for the transition and how to do it.

Your child will need to nap up until about the age of 4. However, the amount of day sleep as well how long she can be awake during the day will change as she gets older. A newborn, for instance, can be awake only for about 1-1.5 hours at a time and should sleep a total of about 8 hours during the day. As your child gets older and their sleep requirements change, so do their naps.

How do I know if my child is ready for the transition?

1. She’s between the ages of 15-18 months.

2. Consistently getting around 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night.

3. Is resisting her morning or afternoon nap.

4. Her morning nap is now too short, or too long.

Once you begin seeing those signs you can begin transitioning her to one nap. The transition should be done over the course of a few days, if not weeks. The whole process might take up to 10 days before things settle and she’s on a new schedule.

How do you transition?

1. Gradually push her morning nap by 15 minutes over the course of a few days to get to as close to a noon nap as possible. You may not be able to, and should not, do this in one day. Move it to 11:00 a.m. for a few days, then to 11:15 a.m., 11:30 a.m., and so on… Don’t let the nap get stuck in late morning. Some kids can adapt more quickly to a noon naptime and others need to go slower. Watch your child, as you know her best.

2. Your ultimate goal is for the nap to start between 12:30 and 1:00 and to last at least 2¼ to 2½ hours. As your child gets older she will push that nap later to start at 1:00 p.m. and will decrease to 1 hour at the age of 3.

3. Your child may not be able to handle one nap every day. You may want to do a day or two of one nap, and then a day or two of two naps to keep your child from getting too overtired.

4. On the days she takes only one nap that still isn’t long enough, make sure to push bedtime a little earlier. You want to make sure you avoid an overtired child at bedtime, which can start causing early rising. 

5. When your child does transition to one nap, it may be only be the length of one of her naps from before. For example, if your child was taking two naps of 1.5 hours each, when she goes to one nap, she will probably initially take one 1.5 hours nap. It will take her brain some time to figure out that she is only going to get in one opportunity to sleep for the day, and she has to consolidate all her daytime sleep into that one nap.

6. If every day you are doing one nap and it still feels like a struggle and it’s not getting better, its okay to go back to two naps until you feel like she is ready to try again.

Hang in there! It can take some time… but this too shall pass.