Bedtime routine for 10 week old?

[wem]

DD2 has started to settle into a fairly reliable pattern with her sleep (hooray! DD1 was a nightmare), only waking a couple of times in the night. However, this pattern includes a wide awake period from 6/7pm to 9/10pm, when she finally settles for the night.

I want to start a bedtime routine, bathtime, story etc., but not sure whether to do it at 7pm once DD1 has gone to bed, and suffer a couple of hours of trying to get her to sleep when she's clearly not tired, in the hope that eventually she'll get it, or go through the faff of a bedtime routine at 10pm, when all I want to do is get into bed and feed her to sleep. I was thinking if we started with a late routine, once she got it we could start edging it forward.

Any thoughts?

[ceebs05]

my dd is 11 weeks old and like yours doesn't settle down to sleep till about 10pm (she tends to cluster feed in the evening). We have been doing bath and pjs about 7pm and then trying to keep things quiet, low lighting etc, so hopefully she starts to get that it's time to wind down, but accepting that for now she won't sleep properly till a bit later. Over the last couple of weeks I would say she has been gradually going to sleep slightly earlier. I don't know if we are doing the right thing but at the moment it's the least stressful way for me.

[HippyChristmaspotamus]

wem, i could have written your post except my dd is 12 wks and i have an older ds not dd so watching in interest!

[wem]

Well, at least I know it's pretty normal, DD1's sleep problems were so bizarre I feel like I'm learning how this all works for the very first time. Maybe we'll try it from 7pm as you do ceebs and see how it goes.

[Iwasthefourthwiseman]

Intererested as we have a similar situation. We don't really have a bedtime routine at all.

[MoonUnitAlpha]

I started doing a bedtime routine with ds when he was about 8 weeks old as he'd settled into a pattern of falling asleep for the night around 9ish - so started the bath, feed, bed thing about 8.30pm. Over a few weeks it crept forward so he was falling asleep at 8/8.30pm. Seemed easier to work with his natural sleep pattern than try to enforce something.

Luckily then the clocks went back, so bedtime moved up to 7pm with no help from me.