When do I start a night routine?

[liney80]

Hi, we've got a 3 week old so this is possibly way too early to ask but I wondered when and how you get your baby into some sort of night routine? We're going to start doing a regular bath at around 7pm as DS seems to love being in water and my husband is looking forward to doing it when he gets in from work. I'm breastfeeding on demand so there's no routine with that but do we put him to bed and have to stay in with him? Or can we go back downstairs and have the TV on etc then go up later? At the moment we're all going up to bed at 10-11pm where DS goes to sleep in a crib after a bit of cluster feeding.

Any tips gratefully received by a new and clueless mum!

[Redtractorwontsleep]

Hi, I am a new mum as well! I've got a 10week baby and a couple of weeks ago got him into a good bedtime routine, he is ready for bed between 7-8 so we take him upstairs to his cot and come downstairs for a few hours, we've got the monitor on and obviously check on him often (too often maybe)! He tends to sleep until 3-4am. Maybe 3weeks is a bit young but definitely happened naturally for us when he was around 8 weeks, good luck!

[hollie84]

I wouldn't bother with a bedtime routine until the cluster feeding stage has finished - with both of mine it was about 8 weeks.

Be aware as well that putting him to bed in a different room increases the risk of cot death, so while he is little it is safer to keep him downstairs until you go to bed.

[liney80]

Thanks for the replies. We'll keep him in the lounge in his Moses basket or asleep on us but maybe keep the tv and lights a bit lower.

Redtractorwontsleep - do you breastfeed and do you do any kind of dream feed at 10/11pm?

[Redtractorwontsleep]

No he's formula fed and I don't do a dream feed

[Heatherbell1978]

From about 3 wks we started giving DS1 a bath at 7pm, feed, and then in bed around 7.30pm. He's generally asleep within 15 mins and then goes to around midnight but last 2 nights it's been 1,30am (he's now 10 wks). He settled into that routine reasonably quickly although we can have issues with his bedtime feed as more often than not he doesn't want one, regardless of how hungry he is (or we think he is). We have a monitor with a screen so we watch him in the living room. It's worked well for us, DH and I have some time every night to eat and chat etc before I go to bed around 9.30pm. He won't take a dream feed as he's too asleep but I think we'll try again at some point with that.

[liney80]

Just following up on this... Our DS is now 6 weeks and bf is much more routine (still some sporadic bursts of feeding). He falls asleep in us in the lounge watching tv at 7.30/8pm. Often we can tell he's tired and need to rock/walk him to sleep first. How do we transition from that to going to sleep in his crib at that time? I tried the other night after a bath and he was having none of it!! Is it just a case of perseverance?!