When did you introduce bedtime routine?

[Allthatnonsense]

DD is 7 weeks and no two nights are the same. There seems little point in trying to put her to bed at 7, or is there?
This is a real chicken and egg like dilemma!
When did you start putting your baby to bed for the evening?

[monkeyfacegrace]

4 weeks.

She got popped in her cot at 7pm and that was it for the night. Just like that.

Totally bloody luck, nothing we did, it's just the baby we were given. All 3 of mine have been the same. Luck luck luck and anyone who says otherwise talks crap

Try it if it'll make you feel better. But it won't change the outcome imo!

[BoeBarlow]

When DD was that age we introduced a bedtime routine (bath, massage, feed then down in her basket by 7). We stuck to it every night. At the start she was in the living room with us but we dimmed the lights, turned the TV down and tried to make it obvious that it was night-time. Now at 5.5 months she goes down in her cot no problem. She's not sleeping through yet but she definitely knows it's night-time and will usually go straight back to sleep after a feed in the night (she's generally up twice between 7-7). We found the routine really helped us get some time back in the evenings.

[BoeBarlow]

Meant to say at the start it was the same as you. No 2 nights the same. Sometimes she'd go straight to sleep, sometimes it would take up to 2 hours to get her to sleep, sometimes she'd be up 4-5 times, sometimes just 1-2 times. But we stuck with the same routine and it is so much more predictable now. That comes with age too obviously but IME it's easier to introduce a routine earlier than later down the line. Hope that makes sense!

[jennifer86]

We tried to introduce a routine from around that age. But a few weeks later we realised that DS's body clock just wasn't set for the bedtime we had chosen. For us, it meant he had always drifted off (we thought for a nap) in the early evening and we would have to wake him to do the routine and put him to bed! So around 12-13 weeks we gave up with our previous plan and have implemented a bedtime of 6 o'clock. I remember the first 2-3 nights it took me around an hour to get him to fall asleep but now he is often asleep within 20 minutes of starting the routine :) So I do recommend giving a routine a go but I do think you need to give time for your baby's body clock to settle into a pattern and then pick a bedtime which suits it, rather than trying to bend their body clock to fit your schedule!

[RabbitSaysWoof]

A few weeks. When mine was falling into a regular time night sleep (was still around 9:30) I started to introduce the bath, cuddle bed thing. Then after a few nights when he could associate that with sleep time then I gradually manipulated the bedtime forward so 15 mins earlier for a few nights then another 15 mins earlier etc until the bedtime was 7. I agree there's no point packing up a baby at 7pm tonight when they have never been tired before 9 or 10 I think its just about introducing some kind of event as a trigger to make them anticipate that bed time is coming and start winding down.

[lexyloub]

Day 1 I took him up for bath last bottle in the bedroom then into the cot as he got older and sleeping longer I altered the time to suit. It doesn't have to a religious time every day just keep the actual routine of getting ready for bed the same and in the same place ie the bedroom. All 3 of my dc have been good sleepers and I put it down to bedtime routine with a bit of luck. Ds3 is 5 months old and has been sleeping through from about 9 weeks before that he'd go to bed fine wake for a bottle then go back down to bed

[Christelle2207]

Mine -ds2- is 8 weeks and seems to want to settle anytime between 7 and 11 so setting a routine seems pointless atm. He has a bath with ds1 at 7pm every day and that doesn't help.

Ds1 on the other hand, despite being generally a terrible sleeper, seemed to want to settle at 7ish from a couple of weeks old and so establishing a bedtime routine for him was dead easy.

[Missingcaffeine]

We did at 8 weeks. Was the best thing we ever did - and although my baby is not a great sleeper, bedtime has been pretty good and predictable since around 9 weeks.
I read that around the age of 8-9 weeks they go from naturally wanting a late bedtime to suiting an earlier one.
We went from 11pm bedtime and a whole evening of crying at 8 weeks, to a week later having a calm baby from 7pm onwards, usually asleep by 8pm. It took a week to shift the bedtime from 11pm to 8pm, but was the best thing ever.
The main rule was to do the bedtime routine and then keep lights low, sounds low - so the first few nights this meant sat in the dark for ages with an awake (but much calmer baby), but by the end of the week we were able to eat dinner downstairs together with an actual knife and fork at around 8pm. Absolute bliss! Good luck.

[cabbageleaf]

DS clusterfed for hours every evening until he was three months old, so starting a bedtime routine was impossible until then. It took a while for him to settle for an earlier bedtime - it moved forward gradually and he was six months old before we could even think of putting him to bed at 7 pm. I haven't seen much improvement in his sleep since we've started the routine, on the contrary, his sleep has got worse, but he seems to be teething most of the time!

[Teamomo]

I need help! DS is 4 weeks old. I want to start him on a bedtime routine but I'm not entirely sure how to go about this because of his sleep pattern. So he sleeps all day waking up every 2-2.5 hours to eat and falls right back asleep with the exception of 2 hrs in the morning and 2-3 hours in the afternoon . at 9pm I give him his bath(which I usually have to wake him for), bottle, cuddle, bed, HOWEVER he doesn't sleep. He's wide awake. He'll stay awake until about 12, 12:30 and then sleep again until 2. How do I fix this?

[beekeeper17]

I started putting dd to bed at around 7pm from 6 weeks or so. The first few weeks involved lots of going back in to settle her to start with and she was still up twice a night for feeds at that stage. Gradually she started to settle herself more quickly and the night feeds reduced and she was sleeping through by 3 months.

Just going from my experience, and I've no idea if that's normal or not, it was worth introducing a bed time at that stage even if it took quite a few weeks for it to have much of an effect.

[Dina1234]

1 1/2

[FATEdestiny]

ZOMBIE THREAD

Teamomo - you would be better starting a new thread.

[FitMum87]

still struggling with this one. i have older children so struggle to maintain a normal routine when i have to taxi them to a from clubs at late times. good luck x

[icantdothis2017]

Zombie thread