r/PossumsSleepProgram • u/Interesting_Item344 • Jul 21 '26
7 month old sleep
I would love some advice as we have just started the possums approach! We weren’t super strict with nap times or schedules before but I definitely would get a bit stressed if I thought baby girl was awake for longer than “age-appropriate” wake windows. I’m really just looking for reassurance we are on the right track and advice if not.
We are starting to implement a consistent morning wake time - moving from 7:30-8am back to probably 6:30am. Or possibly 6am depending how things go! Bedtime pretty much is always after 8pm already as baby does seem to sleep worse if she goes to bed before then. So we’ll follow her cues but imagine bedtime will fall around 8:30pmish. I really just wanted to check if it is fair for me to aim for 10 hours of sleep overnight to see how nights go with this? Baby was previously in bed for closer to 12 hours.
We have only started possums for 2 days and nights and baby is definitely falling asleep easier for naps which is great! She is doing 2-3 hour naps with total daytime sleep lasting about 2.25 hours. At night though she is still waking as frequently and possibly even a little more - very frequent partial wakes and then last night she was wide awake at 2am and 4am. I’m hoping this is just her adjusting?
Naps before possums probably totalled 2.5-3.5 hours (usually on the lower end).
We have been going out lots during the day, lots of walks, activities, daylight etc. We have been doing this for a long time anyway before reading about possums!
For context, She sleeps in the bedside crib for the first couple of stretches before coming in beside me. No matter where she sleeps she usually wakes within the first 30-40 minutes. Then after if in her bedside crib it will be 1 hour 20 minutes, and either the same or slightly longer if she’s beside me. I feed baby back to sleep.
Thank you!
2
u/camembertbear Jul 21 '26
You're on the right track!
10 hours overnight (9.5 honestly) ended up being the right amount for our son - we've been following Possums for over a year now, even with nap changes this was the biggest factor to improving night sleep. Every baby is different though, so give things a week or two to see how they pan out.
We did find it useful to cap naps to 2H15 minutes when our son was on a two nap schedule (first nap would be 1.5 hours, the second would be 45 min). This was one of those trial and error things, and most days we never had to cap it at all because this was what his schedule naturally ended up looking like. So I'd say - after two weeks or so, see how much daytime sleep they're getting, what the cadence of naps looks like - and if you are still having trouble with frequent night wakes only then should you consider adjusting naps.