One nap already? NO WAY!

My girls are 10.5 months old and their schedule goes something like this:

5/6 nurse
6:30/7 up for day
7:30 solids
8 long walk
9 bottle
9:30 down for nap
11'ish up
12 nurse
12:30 solids
1:30/2 down for nap
3/3:30 up from nap, nurse
4:45 solids
6:30/7 nurse, bedtime

Lately they've been fighting the afternoon nap. They usually shriek back and forth for half an hour, sometimes longer, than N will fall asleep, but sometimes L is still awake babbling and fighting her sleep an hour or hour-and-a-half later. DH has suggested that maybe they're ready for just one nap... but at 10.5 months???? No way, right? Should I push the afternoon nap to later in the day? I hate to interfere with their bedtime. Is this just a phase?
Advice appreciated! Thanks!

 

It could be a phase, I would probably just try to keep putting them down & hope it passes. If not, you might push it to a bit later, but that may very well require a change in bedtime.

 

Our DD's are around 3 weeks older and we are going through the same thing. Our schedule is very close to yours except with a slightly later wakeup time @ 6:30-7:00am. We've been having problems with the early nap and the second one goes slightly better. They've been screaming for bedtime at 6:00pm which is earlier than normal. We were hoping to start pushing bedtime back to 7ish in hopes they'll sleep later in the mornings.

I'm interested to see some responses too.

Hang in there

 

My girls are pretty close to in age to yours. They are going through all kinds of sleep craziness lately!! One of them is worse than the other. She didn't take an afternoon nap twice last week. She just stayed up in her crib for an hour - not crying - just up there...I finally gave in! I just keep doing the usual routine and most days it works. It does take them anywhere from 10-45 min to finally fall asleep. Last night, the one that isn't napping great, woke up at 2:30 and I had to let her CIO and last week she did the same thing! Very strange. I think it's because they are getting closer to walking and they both have about 4 teeth coming in! They dropped their 3rd nap pretty early, so I'm thinking they will do that with their 2nd nap too...who knows!

 

Naps always got funky when the boys were reaching a new milestone or getting new teeth. They learned to crawl at 10 months so we were in the same boat! Naptime became "crawl around the crib" time. I kept up with the nap schedule and they went back to two naps until about 16/17 months. Hang in there! If it is them going to just one nap, that nap is a FANTASTIC time of the day!

 

My girls are only taking one nap right now, and they are only almost 5 months. They go to bed at 7:30, wake up at 7:30, take a nap at 11, wake up at 2 and start over again.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone! I guess I'll just stick to the routine for now and hope that it's just a phase.

 

Let me know if you find anything that makes a difference and helps them sleep better. I can't wait for this phase to end!

 

I think it probably is. Are they working on a new skill? Crawling, cruising, talking? Lots of times developmental leaps make for sleep disturbances.

 

Mine are very close in age to yours and we too are having the same problem here! Our schedule is very similar to the OP but with a wake up time of 6:30/7. The first nap is usually the better of the two but they have started playing/fussing/crying every single time I put them down. Sometimes the fussing/crying will last 30 minutes or more before they finally go to sleep. One time last week one of them cried/fussed for an hour before sleeping for 20 minutes and then they were up again. It made for a long afternoon. They are getting much closer to walking so maybe that is one of the reasons. I hope this phase passes quickly!

 

So I think what the issue may be is that my super active baby may be walking soon. She's starting to stand on her own and balance and she's just so busy all the time that she fights the sleep. I think she also may keep her sister up for a bit but she usually ignores her after a while and falls asleep.
Today they woke up early - 6:15 and so I had my sister put them down earlier which caused them to be up from their morning nap by 10. By the time I got home I fed them, we played, and I just put them down around 1. Way less fussing this time! we'll see. Now that I think about it too, I should note that our regular nanny is on vacation and so the girls have had three different people (all people they know, including my cousin and sister) watch them while she's been gone - maybe that could be throwing them off too. Their routine has stayed the same, just different faces in the mornings.

Good luck to all the others going through this phase as well! Let's hope it's a short one!