Sorry for the long post but we have a couple of issues with my 7 month old's sleep schedule. By no means is he a terrible sleeper so I'm not complaining. Can anyone share their schedule that worked for 7 month old?
First problem - it can take him 40+ minutes to get himself off to sleep at night. He's not crying and is just babbling/ moving round his cot. He eventually falls asleep independently without crying. For naps he's normally asleep within 15 mins.
Second problem - fairly frequently he's waking up early (5 to 5.30am). We try and leave him in his cot as long as possible. He's usually just babbling / fussing (and not crying) for at least half an hour or so so we just ignore him until he starts crying. This morning I just sat with him calmly in his dark room from 6am to 6.30am so that he doesn't think we want to start the day early!
A couple of points for context- he's generally fairly inconsistent. Night sleep and nap length can vary from day to day which is very different to my older son who was like clockwork. He's generally only having two naps now. They can vary in length from 45 mins to 2 hours. Because of this variation we don't have a set bed time. We generally put him down anywhere between 7 and 8 depending on when he wakes from last nap.
I recently very gently sleep trained him (letting him cry only 3 mins and then comforting before putting back down). It was great and after 3 days he was going down at bedtime and for naps without any crying. Since the training he's also not woken up during the night - he was previously waking up once or twice, and out of habit we were giving him milk. Once we started training we did not give him milk and he settled back to sleep and as I say, last couple of days hasn't woken up at all during night.
Any advice to fix the early wakings and length of time it takes for him to fall asleep would be welcome!