naps and wrong times

give him a third nap then... i'm pretty sure mine were much older before they were awake more than asleep.

Thanks, perhaps I need to try to reintroduce that late arvo nap. So confusing! I've found that while he settles really well for his first two naps (we don't use props, just read the posters on his wall then into bed with his musical seahorse, a wee chat and he's asleep) he just cries and cries if I try to put him down for a third. So I wondered whether that meant he wasn't tired and didn't need it so much. The trouble as well, is that he has been sleeping really well at nights going down to just two daytime naps. I think I'm overanalysing things.

Have you tried incrementally increasing his awake time- say 10 mins every few days until you have added 30mins or so? I wouldn't push too hard as they get over tired pretty quickly.

Jake did this while he was dropping to 2 naps.. some days he would have three and some days two.... some days he would have had his naps by 2pm and would be a mess by bed time.. but it was change in his body and he had to sort his body clock out.

He got there but it did take a couple of weeks, always put him down for a third nap though (didnt always sleep) until he suddenly dropped that lunch time nap and pushed it out later himself.

BecM I can totally relate to your post.

My 10 month old has been in the same routine (that he created) since he was 8 weeks old.

He wakes at 6am then nap from 8-10am then nap again from 12noon-2pm. The only way I can get him to have another little nap late afternoon (around 4:30pm -5pm) is to take him for a walk in the pram or a drive in the car. There is no way he will ever go down in the cot for that nap, even though he goes down very easily for all other sleeps.

In a perfect world I would love to somehow move his early morning wake up time to an hour later & therefore all his nap times to an hour later but I figure that I'm lucky enough that he sleeps well so I'll just leave it & deal with trying to encourage & help along the late afternoon nap until he no longer needs it, which should be soon considering his age.

What I find helps is planning to go out somewhere in the afternoon so that I'll be driving home about 4:30pm so that he'll fall asleep in the car. We have an internal access garage & I leave him asleep in the car with all the car doors & internal access door open. That way I can see him but get a few things done while he's asleep. He usually only needs 20-30 mins nap at that time to get through dinner, bath & last bottle.

Good luck.

Transitions can be hard Bec but they get there in the end. You are doing great.

I've never felt like DS's naps were planned by me. He's 7 1/2 mths. First two naps (45min + 1.5hrs) go smoothly. He needs the 3rd nap (45min) some times it goes less than smoothly, and sometimes it's a battle that I wonder if it'd be better not to fight! Usually he gets his last nap being rocked by DH (if nap doesn't happen by the time DH gets home, DS is a real mess).
If I can't convince him to have the 3rd nap he doesn't take his dinner bottle and won't have his solids either.

Mine are still having around three sleeps a day....they're up at 6.30am, back down around 8amish until 10/10.30am, up until approx 1pm then they either have a 20-30 minute catnap or a 3 hour sleep till 4pm (usually I'm lucky and will have one of each ). If they have a catnap, then they are usually awake until approx 3.30ish then have another catnap till 4.30ish sometimes 5pm. Then they're generally up until their bedtime.