Today the question of yours
that I'm going to be answering is
when do I drop the last nap of the day for my baby?
A couple times a week on our Instagram stories,
we ask "what are your baby sleep questions?"
We choose your questions and we answer them in a video.
So the last nap of the day,
I assume we're talking about the late afternoon nap,
this nap transition happens around six to eight months old.
So if I talk you through the nap structure
up until that point, that might help get a bit
of an idea about where you're heading with your baby.
So by three months, your baby would be having
three fairly consistent naps a day.
Now from our perspective, the ideal nap structure
would be a really long nap across the middle of the day,
a shorter nap in the morning,
and then a shorter nap late afternoon
to get you through to bedtime.
So the late afternoon nap usually is
and should be the shortest nap of the day.
And that's so that they reach bedtime at night
not overtired but they're tired enough
to have a good sleep overnight.
If that late afternoon nap is too close to bedtime
in the evening or for too long, then it can really muck
with their bedtime settling and their nighttime sleep.
So by three months, you'll be looking
to have a three nap a day structure.
Then, you maintain that for a good few months.
Around six months, and certainly before eight months
is when you would be dropping that last nap of the day.
Leaving in place a good long lunchtime sleep,
and then a slightly shorter morning nap as well.
The only way you can really drop that late afternoon nap
is if your baby is having those other decent sleeps,
because if they're just catnapping or sleeping
for half an hour at a time, it's gonna be really hard
for you to drop that late afternoon nap
because your baby is going to be
very, very overtired come bedtime.
So have a look on our website
or our YouTube videos and our articles
and videos around how to get a good nap routine established
or how to help your baby to sleep longer for naps
if they're cat napping.
But yeah, ideally you'll be aiming for
a good two hours of sleep across
the middle of the day,
a shorter morning nap,
and then once your baby is doing that
then you can start slowly reducing
that late afternoon nap
until you can trial removing it all together.
Now my advice would be once you start
dropping that nap,
so some babies will do it at six months,
some babies you might need to bring
it in every couple of days right up to eight months
depending on how they've slept the night before
and also during that day.
And if you do drop that after,
on the days you do drop the late afternoon nap,
definitely bring bedtime forwards a bit
to compensate as well.
So don't be scared to bring bedtime
a little bit earlier
and that just helps your baby get used
to the new, long awake time from
their lunchtime sleep through to bedtime.
And you'll actually be quite surprised
how well your baby can adapt to that.
So you might be thinking oh my gosh,
that's a long time for my baby to be awake.
Like double just about what they're used to doing,
but you'll be really surprised how
with a few days of perseverance
their body clocks will adjust
and they'll get used to having that longer awake time
and hopefully by then you're starting to see
their night sleep become a bit more consolidated too.
So long and short of it is
at around six months,
somewhere between six to eight months
is where that third nap drops away
leaving two naps in place.
If you'd like more information
about nap transitions,
we've got a great article on our website
which we can link below.
If you want help getting those naps happening
and moving your baby through those nap
transition periods our Sleep Programs
have got you covered there.
Again I'll link that in the description box below.
Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel
and you'll get lots more videos like this one.
And ask us your baby sleep questions
on our Insta stories.
Thanks everyone!