The 3 to 2 Nap Transition

Three naps usually come down to two somewhere around six to nine months, and the nap that goes is the short one late in the afternoon — squeezed out by a baby who can now stay awake for the better part of three hours. The sign worth acting on is time: the same nap refused, cut short or fought for two weeks or more. A single bad week is a bad week. This is the messiest of the three transitions, because for a stretch of weeks two naps do not yet reach bedtime and three no longer fit, and an early bedtime is the tool that covers the gap.

It is also the transition most often blamed for something else. Six to nine months is solids, sitting, crawling and the start of separation anxiety all at once, so a fortnight of broken nights at this age is frequently not about naps at all. That is the first thing this page deals with, because changing the day when the nights are the problem usually makes the fortnight longer.

Rule the nights out before you change the days

Look at what has actually come apart. If the naps are broadly fine and it is the nights that have fallen over, the naps are unlikely to be the cause and taking one out is unlikely to be the cure.

Three published things land in this exact window. The American Academy of Pediatrics puts sitting without support at about eight months and crawling as a skill usually mastered between seven and ten months, with babies pulling to standing at every opportunity — and a baby practises a new skill in the cot, in the dark, at two in the morning. Separation anxiety begins in the second half of the first year and can cause many nights of disrupted sleep over several months, with a child waking repeatedly and crying for a parent; the AAP calls it a normal stage of emotional development that usually fades somewhere near the second birthday. And waking itself is ordinary: the AAP says plainly that it is normal for a six-month-old to wake in the night and go back to sleep after a few minutes.

Somewhere in the middle of this band most families also start solids, which changes feeds, digestion and the shape of the afternoon for a couple of weeks on its own.

So: if the third nap is still happening and the trouble is at four in the morning, hold the day you have. Our page on the six-month stretch and the one on eight months cover what is published about those fortnights, and the nap transition checker weighs the two explanations against each other rather than assuming the answer is a nap.

What is actually being squeezed

At six to seven months most babies manage two to three hours awake between sleeps; by eight to ten months that has grown to two and a half to three and a half. Those bands are wide, they overlap, and the wake windows by age page shows where they come from — they are compiled from published total-sleep figures rather than quoted from any chart, because no health body publishes a nap-transition schedule or a wake-window table.

Put three naps into a day built out of three-hour awake stretches and the last nap ends up starting at half past four and ending at five, which leaves a two-and-a-half-hour evening and a bedtime at half past seven that nobody can settle into. The third nap is on its way out because the day has stopped having room for it, not because a birthday arrived.

The shape of the day on the other side

Two proper naps, roughly morning and early afternoon, with the longest awake stretch at the end of the day. In practice that means:

• a first nap somewhere in the middle of the morning, usually after the shortest awake stretch of the day;
• a second nap in the early afternoon, which becomes the long one — this is the nap worth protecting for the next six months;
• the biggest window of all between that nap and bed, at the long end of the band, which is why bedtime lands where it does.

The sleep schedule generator will draw that day from your baby's age and this morning's wake-up, as windows rather than clock times, and the wake window calculator gives you the band to aim each gap at. Neither prints one exact time, because neither knows one.

Cold turkey or alternating days

Alternating is the honest answer for most families, and it is not you being inconsistent. Expect weeks in which a short morning nap produces a three-nap day and a long one produces a two-nap day, with no obvious pattern to which you get.

Keep both versions available. On a three-nap day, cap the last nap at twenty or thirty minutes so it does not eat the evening. On a two-nap day, move bedtime forward — often by half an hour, sometimes more. Cutting the third nap out all at once works for some babies who had already stopped taking it, but doing it deliberately on a baby who still falls asleep for it tends to buy a fortnight of very early mornings.

Early waking, and why it gets worse before it gets better

Early waking is the most common complaint during this transition, and it is nearly always the same mechanism: an over-long final stretch. A baby who arrives at bedtime past the point of settling easily sleeps deeply, then surfaces at five in the morning and cannot get back down.

The counter-intuitive fix is an earlier bedtime rather than a later one. Pushing bedtime back to make the morning later almost always produces an earlier morning. Move it forward by fifteen minutes and give it four or five days before you judge, then move it again if you need to. Early mornings during a nap transition usually settle within two or three weeks once the day has stopped changing shape.

Night waking during the transition

Some babies start waking again at one and four in the morning in the middle of this, having mostly stopped. Two things can produce it, and they need opposite responses: a day with too little sleep in it, which is the transition, or a fortnight around something new, which is not.

The test is the naps. If the naps are being refused and cut short as well, the day is the problem, and an earlier bedtime is the first thing to try. If the naps are fine and the nights are the only casualty, treat it as a rough patch and hold the day steady — that is what the fortnight rule is for.

False starts

A false start is a baby who goes down at seven, sleeps forty minutes to an hour, and is then properly awake for an hour. During this transition it usually means the last awake stretch was too short — a third nap that ended at five o'clock followed by a seven o'clock bedtime is asking a nine-month-old to settle after two hours awake when she now needs closer to three.

The fix is small: cap or drop the late catnap, or push bedtime fifteen minutes later, and give either three or four nights. If the false start follows a day with no afternoon sleep at all, it is the other error and bedtime needs to come earlier instead.

How long it takes, and putting the nap back

Weeks rather than days, and nobody publishes a number because nobody has measured one. What is reasonable to expect is a fortnight of alternating days, a couple of weeks of early mornings, and a settled two-nap day somewhere after that.

If you have taken the third nap out and the fortnight since has been worse rather than better, put it back. Nothing is undone by it and trying again in three or four weeks usually works. Dropping a nap early costs some bad evenings and nothing more permanent, which is worth knowing before you spend a month feeling you have made a mistake — you have not.

Whatever the day looks like, the sleep itself does not change: on her back, on a firm flat surface, in a cot clear of blankets, pillows, bumpers and soft toys, in your room for at least the first six months. At this age the cot mattress usually needs lowering, because a baby who can sit will pull up.

Either side of this one

Before it comes four naps down to three, around three to five months, where the catnap goes and bedtime comes forward. After it comes the long one — two naps down to one, somewhere around thirteen to eighteen months. The by-month detail for this stage sits on six months and seven and eight months.

None of this is medical advice and no page can see your baby. If the worry is feeding, weight gain, a baby who cannot be settled at all or a cry that does not sound like her usual one, that is a conversation with your pediatrician or health visitor rather than a nap question.