7 month old daily routines please!

[Awoooga]

Hello!
My baby is almost 7 months and I believe self-transitioning onto 2 naps a day. He’s always been a crap sleeper, we worked very hard at 4 months to get him to sleep independently at bedtime but he’s always up feeding throughout the night and only naps on the nipple, or when travelling by car or in the pram.
His bedtime is 1930, wakes usually around 6 but can be much later or earlier. I do track his daily sleep but haven’t noticed a pattern yet.
What do your days look like with similar aged babies please? Including wake time, milk, solids, naps & bedtime if possible. I feel like I’m so tired it’s difficult to make sense of all the information online.
Thank you if you read this!

Four months is really young to sleep independently at bedtime so I wouldn’t beat yourself up if it didn’t work. My DD is 8.5 months and she was a terrible sleeper thanks mostly to some issues with digestion. We’re doing better now but honestly it was only after 4 nights of very intense sleep training (controlled crying), that we started doing better. Before that DD had us in a chokehold - screaming for boob, inconsolable otherwise, every 1.5-2hrs at night. It was hell.

Now, we’ve got the following routine:

wake: 06:30/07:00 - she’ll entertain herself quietly until we get up at 7.

Breakfast: 07:15ish - food first, then breastfeed (she’s been EBF since birth and now we do a mix of spoon-fed and BLW. She eats well after a slow start. fruit & veg, meat, and whole grains. We’re taking it easy on the dairy because she may have an allergy/intolerance, and is currently suffering from constipation ☹️)

Nap 1: 09:30 - she’ll do anywhere between 45 mins to 1.5hrs

snack: after nap, approx. 11:00 - breastmilk. I don’t let her feed for long because I want her to eat.

lunch: 12:00/13:00 - food then milk

nap 2: 14:00/14:30 - I never let her sleep more than 2hrs in any one nap and never after 4pm.

Dinner: 17:00/17:30 - food then milk. Usually dinner takes a while!

Bedtime routine: approx 18:15 - Bath, books, bed.

Sometimes this slips but we aim for sleep by 19:00.

At the moment I’ll wake her to feed at 22:00 and 02:00. Next week we’re moving the second night feed to 03:00 and we’ll do that for a week until ultimately we’ve phased it out completely. Then we’ll start pushing the 10pm feed later in the same way. I’d like her to sleep through the night without a feed by 12 months when I may begin weaning her off the boob. (May go to 18 months if necessary but that’s my limit!)

The best thing we did was break the association between milk and sleep. It means my partner can offer comfort if she wakes. If it’s a bad night and she cries after 7pm, we leave her for five mins before going in. We talk to her and stroke her head, and we might put on white noise and/or offer her dummy, (or pick her up if she’s really upset). Sometimes she wakes with a squawk or two but puts herself back to sleep. She’s like a different baby! Now we know if she’s really crying in the middle of the night it’s because she needs something specific like a nappy change, or she’s ill. Before it was often because she’d wake out of a sleep cycle and couldn’t go back to sleep without using me as a dummy. It was so stressful for her, and for us!

I’d say keep expectations reasonably low and try to be as consistent as you can. If he’s only napping while in motion, try to break that habit by sticking to routine naps in the cot for a bit. It’s hard but he will get there. Good luck!

@deliwoman1 thank you so so much for this! My boy also wakes every 1.5-2 hours, is EBF and has CMPA.
Great tips and I will take a screenshot for future ref. I hope your little one’s constipation eases soon!
Thank you :)

I can't ask this without it sounding like I'm being judgemental, so I'll say that I'm not and hope you take my word for it.

How did you justify to yourself sleep training DD when she was waking due to digestive issues (and was thus genuinely uncomfortable) as opposed to just because she wanted the contact?

I'm asking because I could genuinely write your 'before' description right now with my 10m DC (except the waking is worse than you describe), but sleep training seems hugely unfair when I know DC can self settle (because it happens during naps) but is being disturbed by legitimate digestive discomfort.

My little girl is just over 7 months. We've never sleep trained her and she's still breast fed as well as solids. All feeds are best feeding.

Wake up around 7am. Quick bit of boob, get up, then have some porridge for breakfast.

Mid-morning feed a couple of hours later.

Nap around 11 in the pram usually. Usually only 20-30 mins. Sometimes on my knee if she wants another quick feed around this time.

Lunch around 12:30. Some veg and some protein of some kind.

Nap around 2/2:30. Usually in the pram while we go out. This one usually lasts around 90 mins.

3:30/4 up again. Feed.

6pm dinner of some veg, protein and carbs. We usually try to give her something she can eat herself while we have dinner as well for practice.

7:30 boob.

8pm bed. Usually falls asleep on my knee and then one of us transfers her to bed. She usually wakes up a bit. Sometimes I have to feed her a bit more. Once she's happy, she'll go to sleep on her own. Often, we pop her down and she stares at the light on the baby monitor for a few minutes and then closes her eyes and sleeps. We just say good night and keep an eye on the monitor. We never left her to cry to get her to do this. I just started feeding her to sleep in bed until she got used to sleeping there. Then she started not always going to sleep after starting solids and being a bit more full before her feed. So if she wasn't upset, I just left her there. If she cries one of us always goes back. If she's just having a grouch, we usually leave her to it and often she just goes to sleep.

10pm quick dream feed.

2-3am middle of the night feed. She does the hungry baby dance and I roll over and she has a drink.

4:30-5am quick snack feed.

7-7:30am start again.

She was, and sometimes still does, wake up more than twice in the night. I think this is our of habit rather than hunger. Sometimes I also just pat her or pop my hand on her tummy. If that doesn't work then I start to feed her but just put no effort into staying awake myself. I usually fall asleep and then she must do too as I wake up and she's asleep or we both wake up again at her next feed time. Usually after two nights of doing that, she'll drop the wake up.

It sounds like your doing a good job. I wouldn't worry about what articles say should happen. It sounds like you do need more sleep. Could you partner take the baby early morning so you can have an extra hour in bed? If you stop walking with the pram will be stay asleep so you can nap? If you're breastfeeding and cosleeping, I'd recommend falling asleep during an unnecessary feed. I've done it loads and it's the best "sleep training" method I know 😅

I did a 9-week dairy elimination diet and that plus osteopathy for four months really helped ‘reset’ her gut. Things got a lot better after that. We’re still not convinced she doesn’t have a mild intolerance to diary so we’re going easy with it at the moment.

We also waited until she was feeling well to start. She’s had colds etc, so we took the chance when it seemed she’d recovered completely, and when she was developmentally ready to be able to sleep through the night (i.e her stomach was large enough and she wasn’t so tiny that everything was dependent upon need rather than wants).

We were also on our knees by that point and felt we had no choice for the sake of our mental health. We were convinced, too, that it was really bad for her because she’d wake screaming, which is stressful, and get very, very little sleep (it wasn’t like she was sleeping more during the day, the opposite. Some days she got 8 hrs if that ). 8 months of no sleep was insane for everyone.

I have a 6 month old and a 3yo, with having a toddler I do not have a set routine as much as I did with my first but this is a general day:

Wake up & breastfeed: 5/6/7 whatever she feels like 😂
Breakfast: 8:30
Breastfeed & Nap: 10:30/11 (if I'm lucky)
Wake up: usually 12/12:30 (if she actually sleeps)
Bottle: 1pmish
Breastfeed & Nap: 2:30/3
Wake up: 4ish (or 2:45 🙃)
Tea: 5pm
Bath: 6pm
Breastfeed & Bed: 7pm ish

Can also have extra breastfeeds/another bottle during the day if naps don't happen or are shorter

Thank you for answering. It seems like our DC are (or thankfully in your case, were) suffering digestively for different reasons, so I can understand why it was more appropriate for you than it is for us.

@CycleGirl20 thanks so much for your reply! I think I’m going to try upping his solid foods during the day (I’ve been a bit nervous to do too much in case he went off his milk, overthinking that though I’m sure!) and introducing a couple of dream feeds.
His dad is very good and does 50/50 of the baby & house stuff when he’s not at work, takes the baby out with the dog before and after work so I get some me time every day which I don’t think I could survive without!
Not having close family or many friends with babies sometimes makes me forget that we’re not alone with sleep issues 😂quite the opposite!
Thank you x

@BridieConvert that’s lovely thank you, seems like naps are as predictable for you as they are for us 😂
Thank you x

My soon to be 7mo naps are all over the place, he is on 4 naps most days as I can't seem to get him to nap for longer than 30 minutes other than the morning nap. I've tried my best to reduce this to three but just can't seem to do it as he gets tired so quickly during the day and then is wide awake after 30 mins. He is very active and alert baby and doesn't stop moving so I think he tires himself out! I am also contact napping or pram napping as he wakes up very quickly if I put him in his cot !! Any tips ?? Average day below. Also he has CMPA

Bed 8.00pm with bottle
Awake for bottle 5.30 then back to sleep (sometimes he doesn't go back to sleep!)
Awake 7am
Bottle 8.30
Solids 9am
Nap 9.15-10.30 (contact nap)
Bottle 11.30
Solids 12 (sometimes, don't always give solids at lunch)
Nap 12.45-1.15
Bottle 2.30
Nap 3.15-3.45
Bottle 5.30
Nap 5.30-6
Bottle and bed 8pm

Just out of interest, why are you waking a 8 month old up for feeds? Not criticism, just never known anyone to do this!

She’s small and can be a bloody nightmare to feed during the day due to distraction. It’s like feeding a raccoon. My supply also tanks at the merest suggestion of my period, a cold, stress, a rough day - you name it and I stop producing well. We tried a bottle of formula a night but she’s had terrible constipation through weaning so the gp advice has been to give dairy a rest.

She’s been ill quite a bit since birth and through that I’ve fed on demand as it’s the sensible thing to do. Getting off that train has been hard so twice a night when I decide is like heaven to me. If I didn’t, I can guarantee she’d wake more often wailing for it. We’re weaning her off night feeds slowly.

I didn’t invent dream feeding though. Loads of people do it.

I have a 7 mo. Here's our current routine (roughly, obviously can vary day to day):

06:30 - wake, small breastfeed, get dressed, go downstairs with dad while I dress toddler.

08:30 - breakfast

09:30 - breastfeed, nap

10:30 - wake

12:00 - lunch

14:00 - breastfeed, nap

15:30 - wake

16:00 - tea

19:00 - breastfeed, bed

01:00 - night feed

Fair enough sounds like it working for you! You have a lot of will power to wake a sleeping baby in the night I've never done it, but luckily my youngest has never woken for it either!