I miss my evenings :-(

[Mississippilessly]

We have a 10 week old DS. Currently he is napping in his sling, we are in the bedroom in the dark.

Up until this week we have been following the rule of no longer than 90 mins awake between naps and then letting him nap for as long as he likes. This has dictated bedtime and we have had a couple.of evenings where he has napped until 9pm or so. He will usually nap for about 2.5 hrs at a time (only ever in the sling) This hasn't always worked and he still doesnt usually get the 15.5 hrs he apparently should get. I try so hard to get him that.

This week we are trying to get him to bed earlier to try and stretch his nighttime sleep.It has been 9pm for the past 2 nights. This has meant dinner on the bed on the dark then straight to sleep for DH and I.

Today he has napped for about 6hrs. He is asleep now, has been for an hr. This is longer than they say he should be asleep for in the day.

Do I wake him up? If i let him sleep i could watch a tv programme in peace but i wonder if he would go longer at night if he had fewer naps.

My head hurts. I so want to be able to put him to bed and then just have a tiny bit of baby free time. But I am also scared of waking him - it seems wrong.

Help! I have no instinct here!

TLDR: Would you wake a baby up?!

My baby never ever sleeps as much as he was supossed to- ever!
He doesn't nap in the day (except after jabs so had Calpol) . He however did suddenly sleep through the night at 4 months old. Is a godsend!
Hoenstly just chill your doing fine and congrats on baby xx

Easy to say but try going with the flow a bit. I used to try not to let them sleep after 5.30 or so with a view to ‘bed time’ being 7pm. This was often in the basket downstairs.

Do you think sleeping in a buggy would work as a half way point between sling and crib?

I'm not sure who this 'they' is who is telling you when/ where your baby should be sleeping, but I would back away slowly.

A 10wo won't be in any sort of routine really and if they are it will change...lots.

Sadly you probably won't get much of a baby free evening until DC is 6-12 months, maybe much longer. Until then just do what works!

PS: I'm pretty sure that a year or so from now, you and DH will piss yourselves laughing that you were eating dinner in a dark room

So we tried just keeping him downstairs. He tried to nap on me, woke up after 5 mins, was then overtired and we had a horrendous night.

Really stuck.

Two brothers have inherited their mother’s house. One wants to buy the other out to keep the property as an investment.

House has been valued at £85-90k. Or could achieve £95k if a bit of smartening up is done. The work to do this would cost about £1500.

Estate agent and solicitors fees to sell on would be about £2k (if house was sold to someone else)

What price do you think would be fair to both brothers? Interested to know what impartial people think.

Sorry, I was trying to start a new thread

By baby no3 I had learnt to not wake them up. Baby 1 is such a shock to the system and it’s totally normal to question your instincts x

My DS is a bit older than yours but regularly only naps for 5 minutes and has done since he was about 2 weeks old so I feel your pain! Once he's awake there is no chance you're getting him back to sleep! Can you stick him in the sling and then sit and eat dinner and watch the tv downstairs? DS is awake with us most of the evening, I never try and put him down at 7pm, I just wait until about 2-3 hours (or sometimes even 4 if he's wide awake!) after he last napped, til he seems tired, and then take him up then, which is around when we go to bed! He kicks on his playmat or goes in his bouncy chair while we eat dinner. Whenever we tried to put him to bed earlier he wouldn't have it. I was a bit like you and stressed and worried that I didn't have a routine and thought I must be making the nights worse as a result, but I realised that regardless of what happened during the day it made no difference to the nights. There was no correlation whatsoever. So then I stopped worrying about it.

I don’t know what to say other than go with what suits your baby. At 10 weeks he is only tiny and needs to get used to being in the outside world.

I remember putting DD into her Moses based in the lounge whenever she needed to sleep. I would have a nod off on the sofa next to her in the daytime to stop me being totally exhausted. Normally she would fall asleep later on in the evening (at aut 8ish) and then we’d take her to bed when we went up. We swaddled her which helped her to stay asleep when we moved her upstairs.

The best advice I had was remember this too shall pass. The difficult stages feel like they go on for ever but they truly don’t.

You just need to get on with things. He will learn to nap out and about and wherever at home eventually. If youre following the 'sleep eat change play repeat' pattern he should get in to a sort of routine where you can take turns so one of you gets a solid few hours peace at a time.

We didn't get our evenings back to share until we were down to two solid naps a day and bedtime at 7pm (at around 10/11m old). He still doesnt sleep though at 18m old. Some babies are just sleep vampires. You have one of those. The first year is the hardest, you just have to battle through sadly.

It’s very hard to know what to do but it does all pass sooner than you think!

We stayed with our daughter in the bedroom after 7 as the recommendation is to stay together and we wanted her to have a routine of being in bed not in living room etc. I think we did that till about 4 or 5 months then we came downstairs for evening. Out of all of our friends children she slept the best and I think routjne really helped

Op can I ask, are you a very orgsnised and in charge type of person?
In the kindest possible way you may have run a team at work or been ace at your job back in your previous life but now your new boss is a tiny human who cares not one tiny bit for your eating or sleeping patterns.
Just put baby in a basket or on the sofa next to you and watch telly eat your favourite foods and pour yourself a large G and T EVERY night in celebration of getting through the hardest days work you will ever do
You deserve to relax and chill
YOU ARE DOING JUST GREAT !! ( repeat everyday or write it on the fridge if necessary)

DD is 7 weeks. She sleeps anywhere between 8-14 hours a day - the only way I'm guaranteed her sleeping is taking her out in the sling.

In the evenings we have introduced a little routine (in the loosest sense of the word) where we bath her, put her in a sleeping bag and put her down in the Moses basket in the living room with us. We dim the lights and turn the tv down a bit. (We're probably being over cautious - we took her to a birthday party on Friday and she slept through a lot of loud music and singing!) Sometimes she sleeps 7-10.30 sometimes she doesn't (plays, cluster feeds, just looks at us wide eyed) Sometimes she sleeps on one of us. Then we take her upstairs about 11 with us.

In the last 7 weeks I've learned very quickly that baby advice is to be taken with a pinch of salt and us new parents need to accept that babies will do what they want to do, especially at this age. Be kinder to yourself OP and try (I know it's hard) to just go with the flow a bit more - and please don't just sit in the dark In your room, that way madness lies!

You have to try to figure out what works best for you without over thinking it and trying to second guess them. Easier said than done I know, I still find myself lying awake thinking 'oh DS will wake up soon, might as well not go back to sleep' and an hour later he's still asleep (he's 11 months and my second - I should know better!). I love routine but both mine have been awful daytime nappers, often just cat napping as and when. We would put both of them to bed upstairs from about 3/4 months, before that they'd be in the Moses basket downstairs with us. Hope you manage to figure out what works for you.

The best book I ever read on baby sleep patterns was one I got off a magazine! Can’t remember what it was called now.

Basically it was about identifying the ‘core’ times the baby slept and building on them. So for example if baby always fell asleep around 10am then that is the time to put them down awake in their day time sleeping area. They would generally be able to learn to self settle easiest then. It was also about keeping daytime and night time sleeps different too. So maybe you’d put baby down in a pram in a downstairs room rather than a bedroom (for example) and day time noises wouldn’t be quietened.

The nighttime core time would be identified, say the longest sleep was 10pm - 3am so you’d start a bedtime routine just before 10pm.

Then as the baby grew up and slept longer you’d simply move that bedtime routine forward.

Nighttime would be in the cot and in a darkened room and everything kept quiet and low key.

There was a bit more to it but that was the basics. The aim was to have a self settling baby who could sleep through daytime noise for naps and understood night time was different to daytime.

I believe it worked for mine. I made a complete mess of things with my first which meant me spending ages settling him each night so I’d been determined to not do same with the others lol.

I would stop monitoring how long he is sleeping for a start. He will sleep when he is tired. When he isn't tired he will be awake. There is no magic number of hours that he should be sleeping for.

Put him down for naps in his Moses basket in the living room until you two are ready to go to bed, he will still sleep. Have a small lamp on instead of the big light, keep tv volume normal. You do not need to eat your dinner in the dark!

He's a baby not hitler 😂😂

You are not in control, he is, the darling little tyrant
Just get sleep when you can

Don't wake a sleeping baby! We used to keep our PFB in a moses basket downstairs until about 10 weeks old with us till we went to bed then a friend ( who works with little babies) suggested taking PFB up and settling in the basket in our room at 8 after feeding. I said what's the point as he'd be hungry again by 10.30/11pm and friend said try it and see.
Well, even though it took a while to settle PFB at first up there, DW and I took turns, and PFB stayed up stairs. Got sued to sleeping on own AND we got our evenings back even for a couple of ours which really made the difference to me.
Also - as with all things to do with babies, this phase will pass. Your DC will grow, start sleeping from 6-6 or 7 to 6 as a toddler and you'll get that time back.

Bedtime shouldn't take 2 hours to start, not surprised you're a bit fed up. DS didn't start going to bed earlier until he was sleeping longer (I've never understood people who put little babies to bed at 7pm, even if they're sleeping for an 8 hour stretch, they're still waking middle of the night). His bedtime was 9pm or 9:30pm until he was sleeping later in the morning, and we moved it earlier gradually then. He would just chill in his bouncy chair while we ate dinner and cwtched while we watched TV. We did do a bath routine from early on so that probably started at 8pm or 8:30pm. Good luck.

Will baby sleep in the pram during the day?
Walk him to sleep-even around the garden- then bring pram inside (or leave by the door if it’s a nice day), and leave to sleep?
Worked a treat for us, and still do it when my 2 year old fights his nap in the aftermoon.

Good luck!

You don't need to be putting so much pressure on yourself. The only thing you need to do is feed and change just now. The recommendations to get them used to day and night is just close to when you want their bedtime to be (usually around 7) get baby into pjs and do a simple routine (book and sleeping bag for example). Then get your living room evening ready (dimmer lights, tidy away baby crap) to settle with your husband and watch crap telly and eat food (usually takeaway as you are too tired to cook). Baby can sleep in moses basket or crib or box or whatever in living room whilst you have your evening. BUT if baby chooses to have their awake time then then you kind of have to go with it and enjoy their smiles and nonsense even though its technically bedtime. When you go upto bed take baby with you and then lights off, boring bedtime feeds, into proper sleeping space. It is really not recommended AT ALL to put them upstairs with a monitor so young.

Everyone loves to speak about their baby's sleep. Sometimes people declare their baby is sleeping through from 5 days old but the first couple of years there are a whole series of regressions and teething to change things. There are millions of forums online and the main theme is that sleep is personality related and is a development stage and people who claim their method is the one that works generally are people who have had 'good sleepers'. At the end of the day, regardless of what interventions you put in place your baby will fall asleep when they are tired.

Just make sure you are getting enough sleep, try and get at least one nap a day to make up for the broken sleep. Also on weekends your DH or DM/MIL could maybe take baby out a walk and let you sleep/bathe/chill out?

Thanks everyone.
Im not trying to be defeatist but he wont sleep in his pram. He wont nap in his moses downstsirs amd he gets cranky if he has been awake too long.
Tonight is not going well. I feel absolutely broken.

He has been awake every hr. I am so desparate for sleep.

My daughter didn't like her Moses basket, we had to use the pram section of her pushchair on the Moses basket stand. You need to find what works for you, which might take longer than you'd like but you will get there.
Where will he sleep? Build on that. Will he sleep in his cot? If so do you have a travel cot you could try if you want him downstairs for now in the evenings?
And if anyone has a baby that goes down 7-7 then that's nice for them, just remember that babies are little individuals too, some babies like strict routines others don't. No one way is best, what works for you is what is best for you.

@Mississippilessly are you on Instagram? There is a woman on there called the Blissful Baby Expert, whose advice centres on sleep. She is really lovely, non judgemental and actually responds to messages! I know routines aren't for everyone, but it may be worth sending her a message to see what she thinks. She gave me some useful advice about my DD a while back, and we follow her night routine which has given us our evenings back. Of course, this doesn't work for everyone, but we thought we may as well try it to see what happens!