Saturday, February 13, 2010

Nap Transitions at 15 1/2 Months

Micah transitioned from 2 naps to 1 nap this past week. He will be 16 months on the 25th.

I started to notice his need for this transition when he was taking a really long time to go down for his second nap in the afternoon. Prior to this he'd take two 2 hour naps one from 10 - 12 and the other from 2 - 4.

I tried just giving him one nap right away, but then he was crabby that evening and sometimes even into the next day. So, I made his morning nap shorter since I wanted him to eventually take his long nap in the afternoon when Jackson was sleeping (although, I think he would have naturally taken a longer nap in the morning and a shorter nap in the afternoon).

For about a week or so he was taking one 45 minute to an hour nap in the morning from 11 - 12 (I'd have to wake him up from that nap otherwise he'd sleep longer and not take an afternoon nap) and a longer 2 hour nap in the afternoon from 2 - 4. He did that until he was having a hard time falling asleep or woke up early on a regular basis from his second nap. (There were even a few nights that it disrupted his night time sleep too, but that may have also been due to sickness/teething.)

Every once in awhile I'd skip his morning nap to see how he handled it. Once he could skip a morning nap without being cranky that night and/or the next day, we tried skipping the morning nap for two or three days in a row. That naturally happened on the weekends because 1. Saturdays can be pretty busy, and 2. he has been skipping his morning nap at church for several months now, so then we'd just skip Monday's morning nap as well.

It's been one full week with only one nap in the afternoon and although for a couple of them he only slept 2 hours (again I think that was due to sickness/teething) for the most part he is sleeping 3 hours for his afternoon nap, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

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