We're not quite ready to do 2-3-4 consistently, but for those who have experience with it, how did you know when your LO was ready for it? Some days, LO takes only two naps but that's because his first two naps were really good and he didn't need/have time for a third. But those days, he is still up only two hours between the 1st and 2nd naps. Did you just experiment with wake times?
On the flip side, what if LO took a crappy 1st or 2nd nap? Did you still keep them up 3 hours between naps, or 4-plus hours until bedtime?
LO just turned 6 months.
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We went to a loose 2-3-4 just before 6 months. LO was really fighting the last nap, and I felt I would rather deal with a slightly grouchy tired baby than to fight him every day. Also his naps had started to lengthen - I'm not sure how you could do it with short naps. He would sleep 1 - 1.5 hours in the morning and 2- 2.5 hours in the afternoon.
It took a little while to transition, and at the start there were still some 3 nap days - if the earlier ones went badly or if he fell asleep in the pushchair before I could get him home.
He's still on 2 naps now at 11 months, although we did experiment with 1 recently. He doesn't sleep more than 11 hours at night though, so his is more of a 3.5-3.5-4!
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I don't remember how we knew he was ready for it. But I do remember thinking we could've probably started it much earlier than we did.
We didn't really do much experimentation with nap times. For the first few months I went more by the max wake time he should have for his age. But at some point I decided to try out the 2-3-4, even though his max wake time at that point was about 3 hours, and it worked great for us. It's always been really clear when he needs his morning nap - he gets cranky two hours, almost on the dot, from when he wakes up. And in the afternoon he's a lot more flexible, so we went with 3 hours and it works. In the evening we always do bedtime at the same time by the clock, instead of going by the 4 hour guideline. He doesn't nap great at daycare so some days his naps end at 1pm and there's no way he'd be in bed by 5.
To answer your question about crappy naps - if the 2nd one is crappy we usually just muddle through. If I put him to bed too early he'll be up too early in the morning and then it starts a vicious cycle. There are days when he's really off though and we either go to bed a half hour early, or take a catnap in the playroom. For the first nap, if he's at home he almost always has a great nap. If he doesn't I'll go by his signs. Last weekend we had a random bad first nap and 2 hours after he woke up he was a mess so I took him up for a nap and he fell asleep pretty quickly.
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