How do I know when my baby is ready to drop a nap?
Readiness is a pattern across a couple of weeks, not one hard day. The signs are consistent resistance, or naps starting to cost you the night.
One nap keeps getting refused
Not one hard day, but the same nap being fought most days across two weeks or so. Isolated refusals happen for many reasons.
Sleep starts trading places
When daytime sleep begins pushing into the night, or bedtime keeps drifting later, the total is redistributing rather than disappearing.
The change is gradual, not clean
Nap transitions are rarely a single decisive day. Most families spend weeks somewhere between the old pattern and the new one.
What tends to help
- Watching for two weeks before concluding anything, since transitions are messy in both directions.
- Allowing some days with the old pattern and some with the new, rather than committing to one.
- Bringing the following sleep a little earlier on the days a nap is dropped, since the day gets longer.
- Expecting a rough patch in the middle. It usually means the transition is underway, not that you got it wrong.
When to check with someoneSudden changes in sleep that come with illness, unusual irritability, or feeding changes are worth raising with your doctor or healthcare provider rather than reading as a nap transition.
I'd be slow with this one. The most common thing I see is a transition started on the evidence of one difficult week, and then a fortnight of everyone being overtired while it gets walked back.
You'll have a better read on whether this is a pattern or a phase than any general guidance can give you, because you're the one seeing the days.
Sources2
If you want the full picture
Weaver's Hollow. Three naps to two, at six to nine months.
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Look for a pattern lasting a couple of weeks, not a bad few days. The usual signals are one nap being consistently refused, or the naps beginning to eat into the night. The same pattern holds whichever nap is going: three to two, two to one, or the last one.