Bedtime arrangements for little baby

[PinotMa]

Posted previously about my 9 week old bejng really fussy in the evenings at the moment. I have read various threads on here advising getting baby to bed earlier from around this age, and starting a bedtime routine, which sounds like a good idea in theory. Currently he is sleeping in living room and coming to bed around 10pm.

However, how does it work given the rule that you can't leave your baby? Ie if we put him in his cot at 7.30pm does one of us have to go to bed too? To be fair, we live in a small flat and the bedroom door opens onto a tiny hallway, the other side of which is the living room, with all the doors permanently propped open. So probably 10 steps from the sofa to the cot. But still we wouldn't be next to him if we were in the living room after his bed time. How do other parents organise this?

Do you have a baby monitor ?
If so it’s fine to leave him with occasionally popping in to check.

@FippertyGibbett that’s not what lullaby recommendations say. It’s baby being near a parent that reduces the risk of SIDS in this scenario I believe, and a baby monitor doesn’t replace that.

OP I just used to decamp to the bedroom once I’d put my little one to bed. I would read or watch tv on the iPad until I wanted to go to sleep, which was never long after I’d put baby down!

To be honest at that point I was still tired enough to go to bed when the baby did. We didn’t have a Moses basket so I hung out in the bedroom, either reading or sleeping, at that age. Shortly after that we started a more structured bedtime routine.

I will gently say that it isn’t a rule that you can’t leave your baby to sleep in a room alone, it is guidance. Look up some information about this and assess the risk. I put DS to bed in our room with a baby monitor from about four months, because I wanted to have my evenings back and I felt comfortable doing so, with him sleeping in a bedside crib on his back in a cool room.

We didn’t worry about a bedtime routine at that age. It seemed far more important (SIDS Guidelines) to have DD sleeping in the same room as us so I used to put her down in her Moses basket and then she would have a feed about 10.30pm and I’d take her through to her bedside cot then and go to bed myself!

I always made sure my DD learned to sleep through background noise (tv etc) because it’s not realistic for there to always be perfect darkness, silence etc and it meant she happily slept in her pushchair etc too. Even now at 2 she is a great sleeper.

There is lots of noise in the womb.
Mine slept down stairs in moses then came to Co sleeper cot with me, whenever.
In small flat, probably doesn't matter but I think subconscious small baby would be comforted having mother near.
Co sleeper cot was amazing for us..
Babies at that age can't really be called '' difficult '' to sleep! They have been in a totally different environment.. Then taken out of the womb and placed in new unfamiliar places and where they slept curled up and rocked.. Suddenly they have to sleep on a flat surface etc in quiet...

Daily life went on around both of mine..

No routine here and my DD is six months old! I know roughly her nap/sleep times but just follow her cues.

Before six months she stayed in the living room with us in the evening in her sleepyhead. After that we moved her upstairs to the side sleeper for a couple of weeks, then moved to her cot in her own room once we had bought a baby monitor.

Ours used to sleep downstairs while we watched tv in the evenings (usually on me). Then we'd take them up when we went to bed. We did this until around 18 months.