13 month old refusing afternoon nap

Hi - I have a 13.5 month old girl. Until recently she's been taking 2 x 1.5hour naps - the first at about 9:30am and the second about 3pm. She generally wakes up about 5:30am and her bedtime for the night is 7pm.


Of late, she has started refusing the afternoon nap. She will toss and turn and fidget. It can take an hour to an hour and a half to get her down for the afternoon nap - previously, she used to be asleep in 20-30mins.

She is able to fall off to sleep on her own, although she wants me in the room with her until she's asleep.

At night she mostly sleeps through. She doesn't have any milk feeds at night. She has breakfast at about 7am.

I'm wondering if the refusal of the afternoon nap means it's time to transition to one nap? The problem I have is that because she wakes up so early, she's quite tired by 9/9:30am. I've tried to keep her awake until 11am, but she wakes up within an hour. And one one hour nap is clearly not enough for her - she is tired, cranky, yawning and rubbing her eyes by 3pm....but refuses to nap :(

She will only sleep in her cot - I've tried walks in her buggy and car rides. She doesn't fall asleep in either the buggy or the carseat.

Has anyone else been through this? How have you combatted the issue? Could someone share their schedule with me so that I get an idea of what to do? I am at my wit's end as to how to manage this.

Thanks Danda08. Afternoon naps used to be at 2pm, but Madam used to refuse to settle, hence the 2:30/3pm time.

I'll try your suggestion for going down to one nap. Thanks again.

Could you maybe try waking her after an hour for her morning sleep?

And still put her down as normal for her avo sleep. 

Edited by maisey

Thanks everyone for your advice. Finding it quite helpful.

By some miracle, J took an afternoon nap today. I felt like I'd won the lotto!

Lisame, she's been waking up at 5:30am for so long that I've stopped questioning it now. We used to give her a milk feed and try to resettle her but that wouldn't work. Room's pretty dark, especially now that it's winter. Temperature does drop around that time. I've tried waking up at 4am and making sure she's well covered, and popping an extra layer on, but she's still woken up at 5:30am.

I still try to resettle her when she wakes up, but it rarely works. She knows now that we expect her to stay in bed if she wakes up that early, and she does try. She'll lie still and try to go to sleep, but then gets fidgety and toss and turn. She gets frustrated after a while and sits up and wants to be picked up.

Maisey, that's a good thought. Will give it a try over the next couple of days.

Snugglebug, how long before your little one started doing longer naps? J will only do 1hr 20min naps if I put her down for a nap around 11-ish. In contrast, she does 1hr 30mins if she naps at 9:30am. Not much of a difference, but it seems like she's still needs more sleep.

Hopefully today's afternoon nap means that she's a bit better rested. Not sure if it was my imagination, but I was beginning to see dark circles under her eyes :(

Thanks again, everyone, for your helpful suggestions. Much appreciated.