Your 7 month old and sleep

[GnocchiNineDoors]

Please could you share with me your 7mo's sleeping habits? What time do they go to bed, do you have a regular bedtime routine (and if so what is it?), how often and how long do they nap in the daytime (and where) and any good / bad things.

DD is 7mo and her sleep is relatively OK but daytime naps are erratic and sometimes affect her night time sleep and I am confused as to how much sleep she should be having in the day.

Thanks in advance.

my daughter is nearly 7 months. She was a terrible sleeper but we seem to be having a bit more progress recently and I can't complain.

On a good day (around 50% of the time)
She wakes up around 6 (if we are lucky 6.30) and goes back down for a nap at 8.45 ish for around 45 minutes.

2 hour sleep at 12 ish

40 minute nap at 4.30 ish.

Even though she has that long sleep at lunch she still doesn't seem able to last until her bed time of 6.45 if she doesn't have that extra sleep.

I'm aware it's a lot of sleep in the day but it's quite useful as I also have a toddler to entertain. In the evening she goes to bed at 7 and will wake up once in the night for a feed. We are a bit stuck as to whether to drop this or not as she's sharing with my toddler and if we don't feed her she wakes up really really early ! I don't seem to be able to get any more food into her in the day.

As I say this routine works around 50% of the time and I am not always lucky to have the long sleep in the day.

X

My son is 7mo, he was a terrible napper and would only feed to sleep. I did CC and his sleep has got so much better, I know CC isn't for everyone, I had to be very brave.
Now he wakes about 6.30-7.00
Nap one about 8.30/9.00 for 1/1.5 hours
Nap two roughly 1.30/2.00 will sleep anywhere from 45 mins to 2 hours
Catnap 4.30 for 20 mins (or he's a nightmare till bed)
Nap routine always the same: read story, say night night to the sun, lullaby and into cot.
Bedtime routine is dinner, quiet play, bath, boob into sleeping bag awake, lullaby and into cot. Goes into cot about 7.00 but can be earlier or later depending on the day.
He did have a period of sleeping through 7.00-6.30 but now he wakes once or twice, I do quick feed and try to put him back asleep.
In the day he prefers to sleep in cot but if I time it right he will take short naps in car or pram.
It took a lot of hard work to get him to this point and I'm sure there is more hard work to come!

My DS is 7mo and he's turned into a nightmare. He dropped his night feed at 10 weeks and used to sleep 7-7.30 with two 2hr naps, one at 9-11 and then one at 1.30-3.30.

However, we hit the four month sleep regression and he never looked back. Now his routine is as follows:

Wakes any time from 4 (this morning was particularly bad at 3.35) and will refuse to go back to sleep, even in our bed. I usually give in at 5 and get up.

He then stays awake until around 9 when he will nap. Sometimes it will be a good nap and last an hour, at other times it will last ten minutes. Once he wakes, it is impossible to soothe him back over into sleep.

If it was only a ten minute nap he will then be horrendous, crying, whinging, nothing pleases him, until lunchtime. Invariably he will fall asleep during his lunch at 12. Usually, again, only for 10-20 minutes. If he had a good nap he will be well behaved and play, smile giggle etc until around 3 when he will nap for an hour.

He then has a bath at 7, bottle at 7.20 and will fall asleep whilst drinking. He is then out for the count until the whole cycle begins again at 4. I know he's unhappy because he's not sleeping enough but tbh, I can't physically force him to sleep so it's a vicious cycle.

My 7.5 month old dS routine:

Wake 630/7am
Nap 915/930-945/10
Nap 1230-230
Bed 645/7pm

Bedtime routine consists of bath at six- usually about 20mins as he loves it, bottle after bath and then a story then put down awake and falls asleep himself

This heat has him in a stink.
He's gone from 1900-0500hrs & then 2 30min naps & a 3 hours nap in the day, to 1700-0430hrs & 1 (ONE!!) 20min nap in the morning. Gah! As a result he's ratty from around 1500hrs until bedtime.

No bedtime routine, bedtime is normally an hour or so after last bottle, he doesn't bathe everyday.

Hope you get DD in routine soon. x

Thanks for the replies, sorry I havent been back before now.

DD always has bath bottle bed and down for 6.30pm. On the very rare occasions she can last til 7, but equally could go at 6. In the last month we have only offered water at ight and most nights she sleeps til about 4 before waking for dummy / resettling. Once she then re-wakes at 6.30 she gets a bottle and goes back to sleep til 8.30. This is the only constant. Everything else just seems so sporadic.

Today for example, she went back for a nap at 10.30 til 11.15 then didnt nap again til 3.30 again for 45 minutes. Yesterday she woke at 8.30 and just had a one hour nap at 1pm.

I used to always put her down a set time affter she last woke and it worked. She fell asleep herself. Now it seems to be a real battle. I tried the other day religiously doing a put down for nap two hours after she last woke, and while she did have 45 minute naps, she still had a very unsettled night.

I am very envious of those of you who manage to squeeze a two hour or even three hour nap out of them in the middle of the day. Mind, DD does have two hours immediatley after her morning bottle - should I try and keep her up or is that her right time to nap?

I put my son down for his first nap 2 hours after he wakes up, then for the second nap 3 hours after he woke from nap one. But i think their times are going to get a bit longer as he gets older. Quite often he won't sleep for the third nap and then he's a right grump till bed.
Sometimes he has long naps in the day, sometimes only 2 lots of 45 minutes. Nothing very constant here!
And last night he didn't go to sleep until 8.30 because of the heat!!
If he wakes up at 6.30 he wants to get up although I'd love him to sleep for another 2 hours, but he then goes for a nap about 8.30 on those days.

Good idea with the two hours for first and three hours for second will try that today

Well, she woke at 7.30 today, managed two hours til first nap, only two hours tio second nap (both naps 45mins) and then three hours til third nap (half an hour) and bed at 7.

My ds has just turned seven months. He was sleeping quite well up until about 2 weeks ago - sleeping through from 10pm ish to 8am but his sleeping has rapidly gone downhill.

He now fights sleep all day and won't go to sleep until at least 11pm and is then up multiple times in the night. Yesterday he woke at 8am had a 1 hour nap at 11, then wouldn't nap again until 5:30 when he slept for another hour. Then went to sleep at 11pm was up at 2:30, 4 then up at 6.

I am considering doing some sort of sleep training as have to go back to work in a few weeks and really would like him to be more settled then. But I hate hearing him cry and am not sure I could go through with something like cc. Walrus, how long did CC take to work for you? Did you LO cry for a very long time at first?

I've been trying pupd for about a week with ds2, who is 7.5 months. It's been a bit more successful at bedtime than for naps. He would previously feed to sleep. It's taken between 20 & 60 min to get him to sleep at bedtime, but at nap time it's only worked twice, the other times he's just stayed awake for over an hour, when I've then given up. He then immediately falls asleep at the next bf. On the rare occasions he falls asleep in his cot (or falls asleep during a feed and I can sometimes move him without waking), he'll only usually sleep for 40 min. If I keep hold of him, he'll sleep and snack for 2 hours. Since growing out of the carrycot part of his buggy, he'll no longer sleep in the buggy, and won't routinely sleep in the car (especially now ds 1 is on school holidays).

His bedtime routine is feed, nappy change, massage, story, lullaby, bed. He wakes, on average, 2 or 3 times a night, (which, mostly, I can cope with), but on bad nights, can be 4 to 6. I need to be more consistent with his nap routine, but also need to differentiate it from the bedtime routine.

Today hasn't been great. When I was previously just bfeeding him to sleep, he'd nap at around 9, 1, & sometimes 4. Tried putting him down for a nap at 9 & 1.30 today. Each time we did pipd for an hour with no success, and at bedtime tonight, it took 55 min for him to fall asleep.

I'd like to get him going to sleep more quickly at night, then work at reducing night wakings. Not quite sure what to do about naps.