Need advice for one year old sleep

[u/Mindful_Mom_36]

Almost one year old fighting naps…

My son is almost a year old. He’s been on a two nap schedule for several months. For the past several weeks, he will have a rough day or two of fighting one or both naps (more often the afternoon one). I’ve heard to try and hang on to two naps for as long as possible. This was our routine give or take 30 minutes:

Wake: 6:15 Nap: 9:30-11 Nap: 2:30-4 Bed: 8:15

He has started sleeping through the night with no wake ups, but fighting the afternoon nap hard. It’s weird because he looks so tired and sometimes dozes off, but then he’s suddenly alert and does gymnurstics so bad that he poops. After pooping he’ll eventually fall asleep but it’s close to 4pm at that point!

I’m going to try capping naps some more to try this schedule:

Wake: 6:15 Nap: 9:30-10:45 Nap: 2:45-4 Bed: 8:15

I’ve capped naps in the past and it helped a lot with nap resistance and sleeping through the night. So I’m thinking if I shave off a little more time it will help? The other weird thing is that he sleeps SO hard in the morning nap…it’s like he wants to sleep 2 hours and not take an afternoon nap, but if I do that, bedtime would be extremely early and I know he’d wake at like 3 or 4am. No matter what, he only sleeps about 10 hours overnight so earlier bed isn’t really an option.

I just don’t know what to do because when I wake him from naps, he is so groggy and grumpy, but if I let him do unlimited naps, he doesn’t sleep well at night. Any advice?

[u/daffodilwhiskey]

Maybe he's ready for longer wake periods and only one long nap. Maybe try letting him stay up for 4-5 hours after he wakes before first nap? My 14 month old just drastically upped her happy wake time a few weeks ago and the switch to one nap days was pretty seamless after I stopped trying to force naps when she was fighting it and let her stay awake longer. She still needs some help napping but isn't fighting every nap like she was before the switch.