Where and when to sleep!!?

[Kimbers197]

Hi, please forgive me if I sound completely stupid but I would like others opinions on this! I have a 9 week old baby and I'm totally confused about bedtime! He is in a sort of ish routine feeding wise during the day usual feeds 7am ish 10am ish 1pm 4pm 7pm then 10pm. He stays in the room with us for all his day time naps which there seems to be no real pattern to and we keep him up with us until his 10pm feed then we all go up to bed.
However I keep reading about bedtime routines etc and baby being put to bed at 7 or 8pm but I thought they're meant to be in the same room for all naps until they're six months so how is this possible!? What have others done with regards to a proper bed time? There's no way I can put him down in the living room with us in the evening and expect him to sleep through to etc. Any help much appreciated!

[dementedpixie]

If it works for you then keep doing it. As they get older a bedtime routine can evolve

[NapQueen]

Advice is to keep them with you for all sleeps till 6mo but with my two we got to about 8/9 weeks and put them to bed at 7pm in our bedroom. It's adjacent to the living room and we left the door open so the baby could hear noises, but it meant we could have the TV on a little louder or have the big light on and at the same time they got used to that time of the day being bedtime.

Obviously everyone just does what works for them with the info that is available so I'm not say "you should do this".

Ours fell into bedtime routines very early, but that may have just been pot luck haha

[MrsMogginsMinge]

This baffled me too! The bedtime routine advice is basically inconsistent with the SIDS advice. I think 10 is a perfectly reasonable bed time at 9 weeks. And that way the (hopefully) deeper longer sleep at the start of the night coincides with your bedtime! I think we started to gradually move bedtime back at about 3-4 months, first to 9, then 8 - until he was on a 'traditional' baby bedtime of 7.30ish at around 5-6 months. But it was totally led by him - basically, if they go into a deep sleep rather than a little nap at 9 then you know that's bedtime! DS used to take crappy short naps at 3/4 months and so needed an earlier bedtime at that age. Some of my friends' DC slept well during the day so kept their later bedtimes for longer. Also some babies will happily snooze in the living room where as some (like mine) would be easily disturbed. Most people I know just reached a sort of compromise after the first few months where daytime naps and nighttime sleep mostly happened in the same room, apart from 1-2 hours at the start of the night. I actually don't know anyone who kept their baby in a Moses basket downstairs until bedtime right up to 6 months! But don't feel you need to be doing a 7pm bath/book/bed routine yet - bit pointless when the baby wakes up after 30 mins!

[Tumtitum]

I know how you feel I got so confused by all of this too!! My DD is 15 weeks and in the last couple of weeks we have just started putting her down in the evening upstairs, with a monitor. She got so alert around 12 weeks she wouldn't go to sleep anywhere but a darkened room or in the sling (with her head covered!!). Prior to this we did a bedtime routine but then would have her sleeping on us/ in the sling for a bit and to be honest I was also going to bed with her around 8/9pm!! Now do bath at 6.30, she's normally asleep by 7.30, usually wakes up once to be resettled but otherwise sleeps until around midnight. I don't know how they realistically expect any baby to be able to nap in the same room as someone else right up to 6 months, they just get too curious!!!