What's your newborns bedtime routine?

[Melittlebee]

My baby is 9 days old and I'm trying to work out if I could make bedtime easier as he comes alive as soon as I take him upstairs. It then takes a good 2 hours to feed then change and keep upright so he's not sick.

He won't sleep in his crib so we co sleep but I'm getting a crap nights sleep.

Any tips please?

“I've read that you should have whatever you want as a routine established by 4 months”

Not necessary in my experience. I mean, do what you want, but there’s no ticking time bomb after which all hope of any routine that suits you is lost. My baby naturally developed his own bedtime of 7pm by about 10 weeks with no input from me. He woke up plenty in the night, but it was clear that that was the end of daytime for him

We kept our dd downstairs with us in the evening until she was about 4 months old and then I went up with her at about 8.30pm ish (ebf and bloody exhausted). She eventually went into her own room at 8.5 months and we didn't really establish a proper routine until she was about 10 months old. Now she's 15 months and we do dinner at 5, bath at 5.30, into pjs and downstairs to watch in the night garden (another one who won't listen to a book when she's tired) and up to bed about 6.30pm when she's BF to sleep. Honestly I would just do whatever you need to do to survive at this stage and not worry about it.

I used to give mine a feed about 11 then take them up to bed with me. It worked well and they soon dropped the middle of the night feed (formula fed). Also swaddling, dummies and sometimes white noise helped them settle.