To decide when bedtime is for my baby?

[BedtimeDebate]

NC for this because my husband is amazing, but he’s annoying me so don’t want him to seem like a twat if my other posts become outing.

We have a 5, nearly 6 month old. I EBF so I do all night time wake ups (which I have no objections to, it’s my choice by EBF). DS wakes 3-4 times a night, more during the regression that we’re starting to come out of. I also put him to bed every night because I breastfeed right before putting him down.

DS goes to sleep at around 9 to 9.30pm for 11 to 12 hours a night. If he’s had a late nap, then it’s closer to 9.30pm, if it’s earlier or a short one, then it’s more like 9pm but earlier if he’s tired.

That bedtime works for me because it means we wake up around 8 to 9am in the morning. I also go to bed around midnight, sometimes later so I can have some me time after my husband goes to bed.

DH thinks it’s too late and he should be going to bed at 8pm. He has no reason for that, just says DS needs to go to bed earlier.

My position is I do bed time, I do all night feeds, so I don’t want to be waking up at 7 to 8am. I do all the work, so I should decide. Obviously when DS starts nursery when I go back to work, it will come forward, but for now, it works for us both.

AIBU for taking that approach?

Before anyone asks, we share lie ins on weekends (I have one on Saturdays and DH has Sundays), so I do try and get some sleep rest then. He is also more hands on during the weekend, but less so on weekday evenings, but if I need him to do something, he will do it without complaint.

I think 9 pm is a bit late for a baby. But since you're doing the bedtimes its your decision. IMHO.

i am totally out of sync with friends that consider 11am lunchtime and then have to be home from 4pm for evening routine. No thanks.

God, yes. 4pm is lunchtime here. DD couldn’t understand why her breakfast came with gravy and pudding when she started school.

So many things we did in the evenings with her. She was a regular in local restaurants, we visited friends and went on long days out. Bliss.

My sister is currently sulking that she can’t come to DD’s birthday celebrations, but it’s her that insists my nephew has to be home and in the bath by 6:30pm. She suggested we could all (5 adults and an 11 year old) go for dinner at 4:30pm. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Sounds fine to me. I like to enjoy part of the evening with my children too. It works for the rest of Europe and most other cultures. They sleep in later than most children but as long as they were getting enough sleep to get up in time for nursery/ school then happy days. I don't want to be woken up at 6am every day. For me it's definitely not the best part of the day. We love a lazy morning in this house.

Why would your husband prefer her to sleep earlier? Is it to have some time in the evening together? I can understand I its that and would move it to an hour earlier

@Nettleskeins

I think children do better on earlier bedtimes. The best part of the day is gone if you wake every day at 9am. Also you may find it harder than you think to shift back to a earlier evening routine. I have friends who ended up with overtired overstimulated babies who couldn't tune out, and then contortions controlled crying bootcamps etc to get them into a reasonable sleep wake cycle. 3 or 4 times a night is quite a disrupted night for you and him even, I'm sure he is just wondering whether an earlier bedtime might fit better with circadian rhythms ??

Absolute tosh. The best part of the day doesn’t happen before 9am.

@BedtimeDebate I did exactly this until mine started nursery and of course we needed to be up earlier. That’s the only ‘needs - babies don’t ‘need’ to be in bed for some arbitrary reasoning that because they’re little it’s better to be in bed earlier.

It was fine. Schedule change wasn’t an issue, weaning wasn’t an issue - nothing was an issue! We brought forward bedtime by 15 minutes every other night for a fortnight or so to get them attuned to the earlier bedtime and wake up time - and like I say - it genuinely wasn’t a problem.

If your husband wants more time with you in the evening then he needs to use his words and say that . It almost feels like he thinks you’ve got it too easy because baby isn’t waking you at the arse crack of dawn.

My 18 month LO sleeps at 10.30pm -11.00pm and wakes up around 10.30am. It works for me and my husband as my husband finishes at 9pm so it means he gets an extra hour or two before LO goes to sleep. Me and husband sleep about midnight and we love a lie in so our timetable works for us. TBH I wouldn't change it for anything else, and we sure don't miss out on stuff that others do because we sleep and wake later!

The best part of the day is gone if you wake every day at 9am.

I didn't mean before 9am. I meant mornings ie 8 till 12

@Nettleskeins

I didn't mean before 9am. I meant mornings ie 8 till 12

But if you said if you get up at 9am the best part of the day is wasted...

You have a 5 month old who sleeps 11-12 hours a night? Why would anyone even consider messing with that? I've been permanently sleep deprived since 2011!

So, no. YADNBU.

I think it’s fine. Slightly jealous as at 5 months mine went to bed around 9.30pm but still got up at 6am. Now a year on he goes around 8/8.30pm and up 6/7am

You're breastfeeding and thus doing the night walking etc, you decide! I have an breastfed 8 month old and so also doing all the night wakings. It works for me that he is downstairs with us in the evenings. He usually falls asleep at 9 too, sometimes later. He sleeps on me until I go to bed and then he goes in the cot. He sleeps til about 8am then, usually with just one wake up, when not teething, unwell etc.

Notmycat...if you wake at 9am, you aren't up dressed and "functioning" until at least 10. Especially with a baby.
And yes, by then the day as opposed to night is considerably "shorter".
It's circadian rhythms surely that make us naturally rise earlier than 9, sunlight and all that jazz.

@Nettleskeins

Notmycat...if you wake at 9am, you aren't up dressed and "functioning" until at least 10. Especially with a baby. And yes, by then the day as opposed to night is considerably "shorter". It's circadian rhythms surely that make us naturally rise earlier than 9, sunlight and all that jazz.

Guess what. (You may want to sit down for this.).

Human circadian rhythms can be different.

Not everyone wakes with the dawn. It’s not wrong, it’s not inferior. It’s completely normal.

He’s right. All the friends I had that put their babies to bed late ended up with nightmares for years trying to get them to bed earlier. It stopped them ever going out in the evening. Around 6 months they do need to be in a routine of sorts with a decent bed time (7ish). That way you can have your time with husband and go to bed earlier surely.

@Shakeyourface

He’s right. All the friends I had that put their babies to bed late ended up with nightmares for years trying to get them to bed earlier. It stopped them ever going out in the evening. Around 6 months they do need to be in a routine of sorts with a decent bed time (7ish). That way you can have your time with husband and go to bed earlier surely.

Absolute bollocks.

Over 4000 evenings of DD and not a single one stuck in the house trying to get her to sleep.

Neither DH nor I needed or wanted to go to bed earlier, to get up earlier or anything else. What works for some doesn’t work for others. And as the OP is the one doing pretty much all of the heavy lifting, she gets the greatest say.

Yanbu. I don't think it matters. Fwiw my now 4yo, who can't keep his eyes open past 7.30pm, didn't used to go to bed until about 11pm until he was about 4mo. Then gradually it shifted forward and now is 7pm. I also have a friend who deliberately made her baby's bedtime 10pm during mat leave (and the baby slept til 10am) because she hates early mornings. Again, her child has a totally reasonable bedtime now and has always been an amazing sleeper to be honest. Do what works especially as you are doing the lion's share. I always found sleep was hugely variable under a year old anyway.

@DicklessWonder you can express an opinion in my thoughts without being incredibly rude you know.

If you want to keep your baby up till midnight and have her sleep till noon then go for it. I’m just pointing out this doesn’t lend itself to any sort of social life away from the baby. If that’s what floats your boat then fine but I love adult company as well as the company of my children.

[quote Shakeyourface]@DicklessWonder you can express an opinion in my thoughts without being incredibly rude you know.

If you want to keep your baby up till midnight and have her sleep till noon then go for it. I’m just pointing out this doesn’t lend itself to any sort of social life away from the baby. If that’s what floats your boat then fine but I love adult company as well as the company of my children.[/quote]
That makes no sense. (You also seem to have missed that mine isn’t a baby anymore.)

Why do you assume baby being awake later means no adult social life? You can’t leave babies that sleep early alone either.

I’m amazed that all of your friends experienced this issue as well. I’ve indicated the issues my sister is having socially because she insists on her child going to bed relatively early. So she’s the one missing out on adult company which I never did.

As I say, 4000+ nights and not an issue.

I did what you are doing, it worked absolutely great for both kids. Keeping them up a bit later with lots of feeds meant they slept through the night and didn’t wake at the crack of dawn. In the following months I gradually brought the bedtime a bit earlier, once they are on solids they don’t need all the milk feeds during the evening. So for example DC age 2 now goes to bed at 7.30, falls asleep before 8pm and sleeps for 12 hours.

@Shakeyourface

He’s right. All the friends I had that put their babies to bed late ended up with nightmares for years trying to get them to bed earlier. It stopped them ever going out in the evening. Around 6 months they do need to be in a routine of sorts with a decent bed time (7ish). That way you can have your time with husband and go to bed earlier surely.

Absolute ROFL at this. All your friends had a nightmare?!

When in my experience - with twins and a then a singleton - It wasn’t a problem.

And I suspect in other countries like Spain it doesn’t cause any issues.

Anyway, I’ve said it upthread and I’ll say it again - @BedtimeDebate do what suits you, if your husband wants baby in bed earlier then he needs to articulate this like a grown adult and maybe take some initiative and responsibility for the baby at bedtime.

Thank you for your input everyone! I spoke to DH about it some more and it really is a case of “that’s what babies do” rather than any logic to it. He was very much “oh, but it’s normal for a baby to wake up at the crack of dawn”! 🤦🏻‍♀️

I stressed that this affects me more than him, and being able to wake up at 9am is better for me. I wake up several times throughout the night so not having to wake up at 7am means I feel more rested when we do get up.

I think the pp who made the point about it being cultural may be right. DH is white British but I have a different heritage, so don’t necessarily see the big deal over early bed times.

I also disagree about missing out on the best part of the day and missing baby groups. All the groups where we are are late morning and early afternoon, so we’ve not missed anything so far. Also...how on earth is the best part of the day over by 9am?!

I am naturally a night owl, my best work from school age to now in my professional life is produced after 8pm (so those who have insisted on day time hours being vital are, with respect, wrong and have ignored the science behind night owls). I am conscious that will have to change when I return to work but I do wonder if DS has taken after me. He used to refuse to go to bed before 1am when he was a few months old but we’ve slowly brought it forward and 9pm seems to work well for him. I also think it works for us as a couple. DH gets in from work around 7.30 or logs off around 7 when he’s wfh. We have dinner, we play with baby for a bit and chill, and then baby goes to bed and DH and I chill on the sofa before we go to bed, either separately or together.

However, my AIBU was less about bed time itself, as I am very much of the opinion that every baby is different and has their own needs, so the fact that some babies are 7 to 7 doesn’t mean others are, but more about my approach being that I do all the hard work around sleeping and night feeds, so I should get the say on what we do for our son. I felt bad not taking his view into account, but what DH wants directly impacts me, whereas an early or late bed time doesn’t affect him at all.

I would definitely say it's down to you at this point.
My son would usually wake up around 5-5:30 for a feed then go back to sleep until around 8:30 - 9 it was lovely. I don't feel like the day has hardly begun at that time but then I'm not an early riser unless I need to be! I couldn't think of anything worse than being up with a baby at 6am every day, you can't even go anywhere at that time! I was lucky with both of mine when they were babies, my youngest is 5 and still loves his sleep now.
They gradually started going earlier and would sleep for about 12 hours from around 7-7:30pm but that was when they were older, over a year old

I'm curious about your 'me-time', is that for watching TV or something?

@Macncheeseballs Haha yes. Just time alone in the living room to watch TV and relax before bed. Obviously I can do that with my husband but I like to have my space every now and then, which I don’t get when baby is with me all day long.