Three naps to two

The third nap has stopped happening and the day now has a hole in it between four and bedtime. This transition tends to arrive before anyone feels ready, and the fix is mostly about the shape of the day rather than the nap itself.

4 min read

Most babies move from three naps to two somewhere between six and nine months. It is driven by wake windows lengthening: once your baby can comfortably stay awake for two and a half hours or more, a day that used to hold three naps stops having room for them.

The transition is easier than two-to-one but it has one awkward feature. Dropping the third nap leaves a long final window - often three to three and a half hours - at the point in the day when your baby has the least tolerance for being awake. That is the hole, and most of the work is filling it.

Signs it is time

Filling the afternoon hole

Bring bedtime forward, and bring it forward more than feels reasonable. Six or half past six is normal during this fortnight, and it is not a sign that anything has gone wrong. An early bedtime here prevents the overtiredness that would otherwise fragment the night and produce a 5am start.

Lengthen the second nap where you can - a slightly later start often helps it run longer - and if the day has gone badly, a fifteen-minute top-up in the pram at four o’clock is a legitimate tool. It takes the edge off without being a real nap, and it does not usually cost you bedtime.

The nap didn’t disappear. It turned into an earlier bedtime for a couple of weeks.

How long it takes

Two to three weeks for most families, with a mixed schedule throughout. Offer the third nap on days when the first two were short; skip it when they were long. The days needing it become steadily rarer, and then stop.

Watch the total across twenty-four hours rather than the number of naps. If daytime sleep drops sharply and nights do not lengthen to compensate, the transition has run ahead of what your baby can manage and it is worth reinstating the third nap for a week before trying again.

Where the two naps should sit

Once the third nap has gone, the two that remain work best when they are roughly balanced rather than front-loaded. A common shape at seven or eight months is a morning nap around nine and an afternoon one around one, each an hour to an hour and a half, with the longest wake window of the day after the second one.

The number to watch is the gap between the end of the second nap and bedtime. Three to three and a half hours is typical at this age. If that gap is stretching past four, the afternoon nap is finishing too early and bedtime should move earlier rather than the nap moving later.

The pram top-up

A fifteen or twenty-minute sleep in a pram at four o’clock is a useful tool during this fortnight. It takes the edge off enough to reach a normal bedtime without discharging much sleep pressure, which is exactly what a full third nap would do.

Keep it short and keep it moving - a longer stationary nap at that hour will cost you bedtime. And treat it as a bridge rather than a fixture: as the first two naps lengthen over the following weeks, the need for it falls away without you having to remove it deliberately.

When to stop troubleshooting

Nap refusal that arrives suddenly with a fever, a change in feeding, or a baby who seems unwell is a health question first. And a baby under about five months apparently dropping to two naps is unusual enough to mention to your health visitor.

General guidance, not medical advice. Your paediatrician's advice takes precedence.