3 month old bedtime routine

[user1467577602]

I have a 13 week old baby and would like to establish some sort of bedtime routine but I'm not sure where to start because bedtime at the moment is anywhere between 10pm and 12 am! Baby doesn't seem tired in the early evening which is when I would like to put her down but she's alert and not ready to sleep. The routine (of sorts) that we have established is that she is fed in the evening at around 6ish and then she'll get a bottle of formula at around 8.30. She normally then needs a top up from me so I go to bed with her and basically feed her to sleep. At the moment she's sleeping anywhere between 4 and 7 hours at night.

I'm just worried that her staying up late into the evening is not the habit I want to be reinforcing but she really does not seem ready for sleep at 7/8pm. She has naps in the day, although recently she has taken to sleeping for three hours in the afternoon - there's not a huge amount of sleep post waking in the morning but occasionally there can be an hour or two at around 9am. I'm also concerned that the only way to get her to sleep at anytime of the day is either through feeding or walking her in the pram. Rocking her to sleep doesn't seem to work and I expect its still far too early to expect her to settle herself.

I just feel at a bit of a loss as what to do and feel like I'm not doing my baby any favours by just letting her stay awake for most of the evening but I have no idea what to do. Any advice will be appreciated!

[FartnissEverbeans]

It's fine. DS was like this for ages but he fell into his own rhythm as he got bigger (he's 5mo now). He's now going down at about 6:30/7pm. Don't worry about it

[thethoughtfox]

Don't let them nap past 3 or 4 if you want them to go to sleep at 7. a warm bath always helps.

[Heirhelp]

4 hours sleep is very good and 7 hours is amazing. At this age they should not be awake for longer than 90 mins at a time.

[JumpSturdy]

It does sound like very long stretches of awake time for a small baby. The thing I wish someone had told me earlier is that the best thing for good nighttime sleep is good daytime sleep. Frequent naps, and at this point I wouldn't worry too much about how you get them to sleep - prioritise getting them off, daytime as well as night. They need a lot of sleep at this stage and getting plenty in the day helps with the nights - illogical as that may seem!