7 Month Old with Short Naps and Night Waking -- Ideas?

Obviously you are still trying to figure out what sort of parenting/sleep philosophy you want to use - which is always a struggle as we hope for hte "magic bullet" which often doesn't exist! The one that resonated best with me was Tracy Hogg - the Baby Whisperer. She posits that you should never leave a baby cry it out but rather work with them to teach then how to sleep. So if you are set on ferberizing that won't help you much.

Anyway, it's worth considering the whole picture - the day/night continuum. Because counter-intuitively, good naps beget good night sleep, and the amount she is eating during the day will influence if she's hungry at night. So you have to re-vamp your whole routine, not just focus on nightime feedings.

Also do you "tank up" before bed and do a dreamfeed? I think both are very helpful with getting that long stretch of night sleep. By tanking up it means give her as much to eat as you can before bed (which at that age for us was around 9 - i've copied her "routine " form that age below. Then, before I would go to bed at 11:30 or so I'd go in and pick her up and latch her on and feed her while she was sleeping. I'd put her back in the crib and that would tide her over til AM.

I checked back to when mine was 7.5 months old and here's what she did:

FIRST FEED - b/t 7:00 & 7:30 eat (BF only) – I give this feeding right when she wakes up, before changing her

SECOND FEED - between 9 & 9:30 eat (2 oz milk with 4 tbsp oatmeal cereal, 2 tsp prunes, 1 tsp tofu, offer 5 oz milk) . I give her this feeding as soon as she shows any sign of being tired – a yawn or eye rub or irritable – then she naps right afterwards usually. So first nap is real early - often by 9:30.

THIRD FEED 1:00 eat (2 tbsp each carrots & squash, 1 tbsp peaches & 5 oz bottle)

NAP right afterwards

FOURTH FEED - 4:00 eat (4 tbsp peas (one whole container), 1 tbsp apples & 4 oz bottle)

NAP at 5ish - a short cat nap to "rest up" for the bed time routine

FIFTH FEED - 7:00 eat (4 tbsp rice cereal, 2 tbsp pear & nurse)

8:30-9:00 (nurse before bed)

11:00 nurse while sleeping

BEST of luck to you!

well i have a 3 and a half month old and he was on a crazy sleep schedual so what i had to do was let him sit in his swing or crib and cry a bit because its not always going to be a cake walk with kids everyone is differnt in their parrenting ways some people take it very personaly but no need to fret if you make sure the baby is fed dry burped let him sit on his own for a bit eventuailly he will pass out i also have a 4 yr old who sleep walks and ends up in random places in the house so i know a lil bit about the problems that occur with the sleeping but if u let ur baby know that bed time is bed time then they will get it if that dosent work then try to condition him for bed time like a bath and calm time for him before he gets layed down thats what i do with my youngest and it helps if u just take ur time cause your on his time ne ways might as well enjoy it while you can :)) as for your marrage working with eachother really helps cause snaping eachothers heads off isint helping him sleep its just making it harder for you bolth to work together hope i helped :)

Hi there. Sleep can be such an issue! 7 mos is still young, and I remember at around 6.5 mos I was DONE with the night wakings with my child - I had it! I was tired, sore, exhausted, crabby, cranky, you name it.

So - I agree with the other post - good naps means better night sleep. I would start there. Often times short naps means your little one is OVERtired and cannot sustain sleep. Do you have a nap schedule?

Say your little one gets up at 6am.
Nap at 8am - 10am
Nap at noon - 2pm
Cat nap at 4pm - 4:45pm
Bedtime at 7pm.
(this is just an example)

Stick to a rigid schedule during the day so his little body gets used to sleeping at the SAME time everyday. When your little guy wakes up from a nap early - try to get him back to sleep. So if he wakes at 8:30am from his nap - try until 10am to get him to go back to sleep. I know - 90 min of doing that can be downright draining. But after a week or so it will work. You can rock him til he is ALMOST asleep, and then put him down again, or sit with him by his crib talking to him softly until he falls asleep.

Once his naps get better so will his night sleep.

Do you use room darkening shades or use white noise to help with sleep? Is he eating enough during the day?

I for one would NOT ever wake a sleeping baby. The only time I would do that is if his nap went too long or he missed a feed. OR - does he wake at the exact same time every night? In that case I would BARELY, wake him up a few minutes prior - to start a new sleep cycle. You can try that for naps too. SO - if he wakes at 3:17am every night, go in at 3:12, and stroke his face - so you just barely wake him. This should allow him to get into a new sleep cycle and break the habit. Again this only works if he is waking at the same time - which means it is a habitual wake and not a hungry one. If he wakes at 27 min after a nap every time, you can try the same kind of thing a 22 min.....

Since you live in Cambridge you can also set up an apptmt at the Ferber sleep clinic: ###-###-####. I know he is popular with the whole crying it out thing, but if you tell them you do NOT want that approach they help you in other ways. I used them for when my daughter kept waking at 4:30am FOR THE DAY and did so for nearly 6 mos. They helped me with a schedule and for the first time I had a life again.

Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi A., one thing to keep in mind is that it sometimes takes a couple of weeks for something to fully work - so don't give up! To increase naps during the day, I tried different places and positions until one finally clicked in. It has changed a few times - so I had to go back to the drawing board each time until I figured it out. The swing worked well for a while. Then she liked sleeping on the couch in between my stretched out legs and now finallyl we've made it to the bassinet - she'll be 8 months next week. I also would keep her awake with extra playing and whatnot so that she slept longer when she finally went down. We're down to two naps a day now - one in the morning for about an hour and a half and one in the after noon for about 2-3 hours depending on her day. For bedtime what we did was put her down at 9:30 with a bottle and then gave her another one when we went to sleep around 11:30pm. When she woke up at 4am she'd get a bottle of water with no real interaction (wouldn't look her in the eye or talk to her - we'd get her up, give her water and rock her for 5-10 mins) then put her back down and not go back no matter how much she cried. It worked in just a couple of days for us. The other thing too is to make sure that he's eating enough during the day so that he isn't hungry at night. Maybe add in some more food with some good calories - like egg yolks or yogurt or whatnot. Good luck!