DH and I have been taking a 'responsive' approach to our daughter. When she is hungry we feed her, when she is tired, we offer a nap. We do keep a vague eye on the clock to see when she might need a feed or sleep, but 7 months on and she seems to have absolutely NO pattern. Sometimes the wake window is 90 minutes, sometimes its 3.5 hrs. Sometimes she will go 2 hours between feeds, sometimes 3.5!
I see friends and others who have more of a set schedule already and I feel at a loss of how to get there. Every day feels like a new frontier and a little more order would be really beneficial to our family now but there seems to be no rhyme or reason with her.
We do try to do the wake-feed-play-sleep routine so at least there is a consistent order of things but we can't even achieve that these days because her wake windows are a bit longer (2-3 hours) and she may be hungry for another feed before she gets down for her nap by then. I do try to separate the feed and nap by at least 10 mins if this happens so there is no sleep association.
She was exclusively BF until 6 months and now we are slowly weaning her off (about 50/50 at the moment breast and bottle, 6 feeds a day) so that when she starts nursery at 9 months she can continue with bottle feeding and I won't have to pump. So this may be part of the problem - she can go longer between feeds of formula than breastmilk. We're also on two small meals a day but most of the food ends up on the floor so no telling how much she is actually getting there.
We always aim for bedtime between 6:30 and 7:30 pm but this is entirely dependent on her last nap of the day. She only naps about 35-40 minutes a stretch, but sometimes she will do the odd hour. Every 'schedule' you see assumes that the child will sleep 60-90 minutes so those are all out the window. And every schedule I see makes me feel worse and worse because it looks so different from our day-to-day.
I assumed after 6 months she would naturally lengthen her nap cycles and everywhere I looked for advice said as much, but this doesn't seem to have happened no matter what we try! Her daytime sleep is less than 3 hours usually which also seems bad when you look for advice online. But she wakes up happy and smiling and ready to play, so she's not still sleepy after her cat naps, but then her wake windows seem really behind what is normal for a 7MO because she will get tired again usually at around 2 hours (but again, this changes all the time) :(
We would try to have a consistent wake time but this too differs every. single. day. I shouldn't complain as she usually sleeps through at least 9 hours (usually 10.5-11 hrs -- and then if she was napping poorly and was overtired, surely she wouldn't consistently sleep well at night?? Is she just a low sleep need child?), but I am starting to feel like a failure as a FTM and don't know how to get her on track or if this is all within the range of normal?? She's a happy little thing, do we just carry on with this 'responsive' approach and accept she is a crap napper?
TYIA for any advice... feeling a bit at a loss!