Sleep Schedules for Babies 7-12 Months: Part One

By 7 months, a healthy baby of average weight should be sleeping through the night. This doesn’t mean that all babies are, especially if baby has fallen into bad sleep practices. You may see your baby fighting bedtime, fussing excessively if they aren’t being rocked or nursed to sleep, or waking up throughout the night.

If you are baby is still struggling, these healthy sleep habits can help:

• Establish a bedtime routine and stick to it EVERY NIGHT.

• Put baby to bed awake every night and avoid sleep props that you will have to wean them off of later like musical mobiles and pacifiers

• Drop night feeds one at a time by reducing the amount of milk by  1-2 ounces or 1-2 minutes on the breast a night until that feed is down to zero. Once that feed is done, do not offer milk again at that time and repeat this process with the other feeds, one at a time, until they are gone. If baby fusses when a feed is at zero, go in and provide verbal soothing only.

• After baby has dropped their feeds (assuming they are still waking up out of habit), you can use the Ferber gradual extinction method or the Weissbluth rapid extinction method to aggressively sleep train.

• Be aware that baby may be ready to transition to two naps. Most parents find the 2/3/4 spacing helpful.  The first nap should be 2 hours after baby wakes up in the morning, the second nap should be 3 hours after the first ends, and bedtime should be 4 hours after the second nap ends.

  By Hannah Mira, Founder of Bonsoir Bebe Sleep Consulting