Naps for a 7 month old!

[NoTeaForMe]

Hi,

just wondering when your 7 month old wakes up and starts their day, when they nap and how long for and when they go to bed!

Thanks

At 7 months mine had just stopped napping for only 45 minutes at a time and started taking longer naps. Roughly his day would go one of three ways:

Awake 7am
Nap 10-10.45
Nap 2-4
Bed 7pm

OR

Awake 7am
Nap 10-12
Nap 3-3.45
Bed 7pm

OR

Awake 7am
Nap 10-10.45
Nap 1-1.45
Nap 5-5.20 (he'd need a late catnap if hadn't slept well early but I'd wake him after 20 minutes)
Bed 8pm

My DS is 7mo - also only started having longer naps about six weeks ago. His day goes something like this:

Awake 5.20 (ugh - nothing we do seems to make a difference!)
Nap 8ish-9.30
Nap 11.30ish-1
Nap 3ish- usually around 40 mins
Bed - Between 6.30 and 7

He still seems to get tired 2 hours after waking up, though can be stretched a bit. And he still throws the odd short nap into the mix (always when I have just finished the housework and sat down with a nice cup of tea), which has a knock-on effect on everything else. I'd love to get him down to two naps a day as he always wakes up from the last nap in a bad mood, but unless he decides to wake up at a more acceptable time in the morning I guess we're stuck with it for the moment..

My DS is 7 1/2 mo and I am just wondering if he is trying to drop a nap at the moment

He wakes between 6 - 7am (often co-sleeps the last couple of hours to avoid a 5am start to the day)

Was: Nap 9 - 9.30
Nap 12.30 - 1
Nap 4 - 4.30
Bed 7ish

As you can see he is a strict half hour man despite all my best efforts

However, for the last week he has been really fighting his morning nap and tending to not go down at all. His night time sleep has also been terrible for the last month or more. On a couple of occassions he has ended up having:

Nap 10ish - 10.30
Nap 2.45ish - 3.15
Bed 7ish

It may be total coincidence but on these days he has had a really good nights sleep for him, not waking until around 4am for a feed.

I am going to try this new routine for a few days and see what happens. It seems hard to believe he could need even less day time sleep when he has always had so little anyway.

Baby sleep ++++

Similar to ellabella2 although my DS has always fought all of his naps, unless they are in the buggy. So I am now wondering whether he needs to move to 2 per day, or not

I work on a vague '2 hours since he last work up' kind of schedule which usually translates to naps around 9, 12, and 3. This includes approx 20 minutes of us discussing whether he should sleep or not (i.e. him getting cross with me and then, having frazzled me out, realising that I am right and he is actually tired), and 45 minutes of actual napping, during which time I recover from putting him down for his nap.

I'm hoping that he is ready to move to 2 naps per day because that is one less time I need to put him to bed I am also hoping that he will come round to the idea of 1-2 hour naps! Apparently getting crawling can help with this as they use up more of their physical energy....

I tried the Gina Ford nap schedule a couple of months ago, and it seemed to help dd sleep through, so sticking with it (not a fan of her CIO stuff mind) so a nap about 2 -2.5 hours after dd is up (9 ish) sleeping no later than 10am, I often have to wake her. Then about 12:15 for about an hour and a half, longer if she had a disturbed night. She then goes down by 7pm until 7am ish. I dream feed stil at 10pm. She's pretty much sleeping through, no major problems in any case. DD is 7 months also

sedgie what do you do if she sleeps for less time than the schedule says? e.g. if she goes to sleep at 12.15 and wakes at 1.00? Do you try and get her to go back to sleep?

Or sedgie what if she doesn't want to sleep until 1 and isn't at all tired at 12.15?

Hi Beela, I had overcome the issues of short naps when I tried the schedule, so she doesn't tend to wake early if sleeping at home in her cot. If she does I would expect her to have another nap later in the afternoon but a short one. Or go to bed early 6.30 (this happens when we go to mums and she sleeps in her cot, only a short nap, it seems to throw her off a little).

NoTeaForMe, if she doesn't sleep too long at 9 (e.g. 45 mins) she will be tired come 12:15-30. But no problem delaying a bit as we did today because we were out, she will still take the 1.5 hours I've noticed. I'm fairly strict with it though because it seems to work/suit her.

I notice if she has had 12 hours at night she will only take 30 mins then 1.5 hours for a total of 2 hours. This makes up 14 hours out of 24 which I'm aiming for. If she has a bad night, we have had a bad patch when she cut two teeth, then she will typically take 1 hour in the morning and 2-2.5 later making up for it a little but not so much that she isn't tired for 7pm.

I'm surprised that this schedule works for us. Although I find its quite nice to stay in in the morning, play with baby in between the two naps, do my chores when baby is napping and then have the afternoon free to take baby out.