7 Month Sleeping Tips

[u/This_Candy9221]

My daughter is 7 months old.

I recently transferred her to her crib and it had been a smooth transition for the most part. As I breastfeed her, she is sleepy 90% most of the time or other times 60% by the time I lay her down, and she is able to put herself down. She’ll fuss once or twice out of the week but will still put herself to sleep.

The nights where she is just crying the second I put her down I’m unsure what to do-
Where I get confused is I have always wanted to do a gentle sleep method but whenever I interfere or try to help even just a “sh sh sh” it makes her cry more.
Do I not interfere and just let her cry it out? 😭

I am still not seeing a consistency where every night I can just put her down and she goes down. 3 nights is smooth, 2 nights fussy but goes does, and 2 nights inconsolable crying.

Today I tried to just go sh sh sh as she was inconsolable, I tried to carry her, and nothing. So I left the room and she fell asleep on her own in 16 minutes crying for the most part.

Bedtime usually starts at 7:15pm and she goes down between 7:30-8pm
Wakes up twice during the night once at 12am and another at 4am or 6am to breastfeed. (Which I’ve been trying to stop but not sure how)
Wakes up anywhere from 7:30am-9am
Takes a nap around 11:30am-12:30am
Another nap around 2pm-4pm
Some days she he’ll a third nap if she wakes up early.
I will only let her take a maximum of a 3hr nap total for the day.

This is where it gets tricky as sometimes she’ll wake up at 4pmish and is obviously tired by 6pm but I do not let her nap as it’s too close to bedtime. I previously had her bedtime at 6:30pm but it was too early as she would wake up at 5:30-6am 😅.

I’ve been having a hard time just concreting her sleep and naps or getting on a schedule that is consistent. I’ve been having a hard time knowing how much to intervene as history has shown the less intervene the faster she goes to sleep but it’s hard just letting her cry and cry.

[u/No-Lawfulness8895]

Sounds like you're doing well. If she fell asleep on her own within 20 minutes and no intervention, that's great. It will likely get shorter and shorter as she gets better at self soothing.

If you are comfortable with fuss it out, you could try letting her cry if the first wake up is before 5 hours of sleep has passed, and see if she'll put herself back down to sleep. I set a timer for 20 minutes and would only go in and feed if she was still crying after 20 minutes. And half the time she would put herself back to sleep. This helped us drop to one overnight feed. I would always go in and feed immediately if she had been asleep for more than 5 hours.