tell me about your evening routine..

[Sleepysally]

I feel like I've lost my way with our evening routine and need inspiration.

Baby is 10 months old and have had same routine since she began weaning at 6 months but I'm worn out by it as I can on some evenings spend 2 hours in a darkened room trying to get her down only for her to wake 30 minutes later.

Feel like I just need to hear some other ideas of how to approach bed time.

TIA

[FATEdestiny]

Goodness I wouldn't (couldn't in fact, I have 3 other children who need me too) waste so much time getting baby into bed.

Firstly is she getting enough daytime sleep and is she well fed and drinks plenty? No point tackling anything else until these are all ok.

Daytime sleep at this age - around 4 hours usually over 2 naps. Id aim for 9am-10.30/11am then 1.30pm-3/3.30pm

Next thing to look at is what is baby's comforting mechanism and how does baby go to sleep.

Baby will need a way to get comfort in order to go to sleep tight right through until school age. Some comforting methods are independant (dummy, thumb suck, toy, blanket, rhythmic movement) and others require a parent (rocking, cuddling, feeding).

If you want independent sleeping then you need to establish and independant comforting methods.

Then how does baby go to sleep. For independant sleeping this will need to be in the cot. Not in your arms and then stealth lowering into the cot. That won't cut the mustard with an older baby.

It's going to create distress if baby isn't used to going to sleep in the cot, but you could stay with baby to reassure rather than leaving them distressed alone. Baby will need access to comfort to sleep - so be it a dummy or whatever you use, it needs to be established for cot settling.

Or...

Another way to think about this is to just say "you know what, this cot settling isn't working" and scrap the idea. Reset to more realistic expectations and just decide to cosleep or room share.

[Sleepysally]

Thankyou for your reply. I think it was useful for me to read your reply. I think I will have to revert to bed sharing and I think realistically that's the only thing that will ever work to get us all enough sleep.

I think I've become too hung up on what 'should' be happening and clearly my baby hasn't read the baby books.

[FATEdestiny]

Cosleeping is fine. My only caveat would be realistic expectations.

Your baby is going to need comfort for a long time to come so it may be until baby is 2 years old, 3y or 4y and may still need to be in your bed all/most/some of the night.

If you are not accepting of this, then getting baby settling in the cot is much, much , MUCH easier the younger you bite the bullet and crack on. Once baby is pulling to standing and then climbing it becomes intimately more difficult to establish cot sleeping.

There is nothing wrong with wanting your own space in bed and baby sleeping in their cot in their room.

Likewise there is nothing wrong with cosleeping or having a sidecar cot and room sharing.

You just need realistic expectations and then to make a decision you truely believe in and accepting the consequences of that decision.

[FATEdestiny]

intimately = infinitely (autocorrect)