To ask if a bedtime routine for a very young baby is essential?

[strawberryjeans]

Expecting our first soon. I have seen friends around me with babies be absolutely fixed to apps that tell them when their babies should be awake and asleep. My sister starts the bedtime routine at 4:30 in order for DN to be asleep in bed at 5:30 (and complains that he doesn’t sleep past 4am no matter what she tries).

I can’t imagine being limited in such a way. I understand routine is important for children but due to my DH being a shift worker, if our child went to bed before 7pm then he wouldn’t see them lots of days. Of course it would be different when I return to work and they need to be up for childcare and later on school, then I totally understand an early bedtime.

Is routine essential before say 6m ish? Baby will need to sleep where we are anyway as per safe sleep guidelines, so I thought surely they would be in a Moses basket in the living room until we go up to bed anyway. This time might change depending on the night.

2 kids pregnant with three - Ive never had a routine, they don't work for our family. Weekdays the kids now 4 and 2, go to bed roughly 7pm. Weekend it depends if we're out, visiting family.
They don't get bathed every night shocker and never have. When they were babies they slept downstairs while I got a couple of hours watching the TV. We coslept until 1 year old.

I have friends with routines that meant they left and still leave parties and events at 6pm for bath time and stories and I, personally, don't see the appeal but it does work for their family - so that's fine too.

I like how relaxed your thinking is around it, I bet that enables you to make plans others wouldn’t be able to. I suppose different things work for different folks like you say and possibly I’ll decide the opposite when baby is here

My baby is 11 weeks old now and we don’t have a strict routine however I monitor her wake windows through the day to gauge when she needs a nap and we do have a night time routine (sensory play, bath, bottle, cuddle to sleep). I was very anti-routine while pregnant but once she was here I found that especially having a night time routine was crucial for helping her settle for bed so we could all get some sleep!

The routine is to make it easier to get the child to sleep in cot though, a regular routine helps as they get older. Otherwise it's more work and less sleep for the parent.

I think routines are amazing if they work for you, I like putting baby to bed at 7pm and knowing she’s in there till morning. Same with naps I get 2 hours uninterrupted down time.

but it worked for me, you have to decide.

I never had routines of any sort for mine. Worked really well.

I wouldn't bother too much before 6m. After that the routine needs to work for you and your baby, but a fixed nap and bedtime is usually a good idea for babies and toddlers

It depends on your child. My daughter had a routine from a couple of weeks old which was bath/cuddle/feed/bed (carry cot in lounge initially then cot in bedroom). I could do this at 6pm or 11pm, it was the routine that mattered for us not the time and at 2.5years she has the same routine although it's much more regular at 7.30/8pm. I didn't do sleep routines during the day either though, if we were out she and she wanted to sleep she slept in the pram. It just worked for us.

I think a routine sort of develops naturally.

Nothing is ‘essential’- it just depends on you and your baby.

ours were both generally in bed at 7 as babies/small kids. We liked having a grown up evening when we could talk and eat and reconnect.

it didn’t stop us going out and we never left anywhere at 6 to get back fir the evening routine.

5.30 bedtime sounds bonkers!

if your partner does shifts then maybe a later bed time could work? Try a few options and see how you feel?

See what works for you. Babies are different, some are happier to roll with a looser routine than others.

The apps can drive you barmy. They give an illusion of control and make you spend precious time recording how you're not sleeping. Which you know because you're tired.

I found thinking “rhythm not routine” helped. So base your day roughly around when they wake/need to sleep but each day will be different. And I would also say that I only follow that from about 3 or 4 months, before that - let them sleep when they’re tired, awake when not. It’s easy to get sucked into it in the first weeks as it’s so all consuming, but if you can try to relax around it, you’ll have a better time IMO

It will depend a lot on the baby but in our experience the first 3 or 4 months were a bit of a free for all. My baby would only contact nap or while being walked in the buggy so I would usually keep her downstairs until 9:30 or so and she would sleep on me.

At around 4 months there’s often a permanent change in babies sleep and circadian rhythms so they are more aware of night/day and the external environment. It became more important to get her into a quiet /dark room to sleep and pay attention to wake windows or else we’d have an angry overtired baby on our hands. For our baby that meant a 7-8pm bedtime and 6am start (though she still woke up at least 4 times a night until she was 11 months or so).

You’ll find out what your baby can tolerate as you go along.

Definitely not. With my first we had a rough routine from about 3 months for bedtime and I think that was helpful as meant we had associations in place we could use if we went away etc. but otherwise no fixed routine as had older DSS and with more than one there’s only so much routine you can have! Now have another baby and very little routine, only that around bedtime I change her, massage a bit and put her in her pjs and sleeping bag. She sleeps better than my first because of temperament…we also sleep later in this house because we aren’t early risers so all kids go to sleep after 8pm unless they have woken early or are particularly tired.

I don't think a routine is beneficial before about 4 months. Most babies will cluster feed in the evening (if you're breastfeeding) so stay up with you and they will start to go to bed earlier when a few months old.

Mine naturally went to bed at 7ish after a while. You could make it later to suit your household though.

For slightly older babies and children, it really depends on the child. Some children are very flexible and can cope with varying bedtimes and less sleep. Others cannot and you end up with a screaming, unhappy baby who won't sleep and won't let you sleep either! Parents of the latter kind of baby often end up fixated on routine and obsessed with naps. Parents of the former think they are being daft! I had one of each type of child.

Mine definitely benefit from a set order of things at bedtime: teeth, pyjamas, clean nappy, story, cuddle, lights out. However screamy and awful and overtired they are being, they usually settle down once this has started as they know what to expect. Again I don't think there's any point starting this sort of thing before 4-6 months at the earliest

DS is 3 now and he very much has dictated his routine.he settled himself into a routine of bed around 7pm and has always slept really well to be honest. When he gave up his nap just before 2 his bedtime came slightly earlier at 6.30.

However - he NEEDS it. He is not pleasant to be around when tired and will not, nor has ever, napped on the go - never had a pram nap etc.
so yeah, we're that family who doesn't go out of an evening with him or take him to events because I'll tell you now, if you were at the event with me, you'd be chunnering about the screaming mess of a child in the corner. It's only for a short time, he'll soon be old enough to manage a later night.

Work around the baby you have, not the one you think you'll have.

It's totally uneccessary. My 3 never had a routine and were just part of the family from day 1. I despair of people who parent by the clock, they miss so much and create a rod for their own backs.

I think that some parents like routines because that’s their personality - they don’t like winging things or the randomness that accompanies looking after babies.

Ime with number 2 onwards, you end up more routine based because child 1 has to go to school or gets up for the day at a certain time so you’re forced to get up and baby adjusts.

Imho it’s fine not to be routine led - babies are unsettled until 6 months old ish so once you think you’ve cracked it, they start doing something else.

When the baby comes you'll probably do whatever works for your baby (and therefore you) to get the most sleep. You probably won't be all that bothered about all the other things you think you might want to be doing now.

We had a sort of routine.
Bath as she liked them and it calmed her down.
Bedtime baby grow and sleep bag bottle. She stayed in moses until I went to bed and I transferred her in the upstairs moses, but we had no lights on or dimmed lights and low volume on TV.
This was to help her differentiate between night and day and encourage sleep. But to be honest babies will do what they want to do and there is no magic way of getting them to sleep at night. What works with one will not work with another. Do whatever suits you.

We never had a routine and shared a room with dd until she started nursery at 3 years old.

Worked well for us, I would have hated being tied by strict regimes and would likely have punished myself if for example babies nap was 10mins longer and that pushed bedtime back an hour. It would have stressed me out. I'd say in this sense I was very laid back.

That being said, you do naturally fall into a fairly predictable routine set by feeds really my dd always did 10pm 2am 6am 10am. So sleep naturally fell in around that. As she got older I could roughly guess when she would nap and how long for.

Not really, the only thing I established from the start was distinguishing night from day. So night feeds and changes were in very low light or dark, no eye contact if possible or interaction. Completely different to daytime which was all chatting, light, interacting etc. I can't remember when I introduced the bath and bed routine, certainly not within the first few months. One of mine found a nighttime bath too stimulating so we never did that kind of routine with them, just repetitive songs and story. Flexibility within a rough routine/framework worked best for us, at the appropriate age.

Do whatever works for you. I have ADHD and cannot do routine to save my life so didn't have a strict routine for my DS. He had an approx bedtime and a routine to get him in the headspace for bed as he got older, so bath, book, bed, but that was it really. Approx times for meals. My friend gave meals at exact times and if she was ever caught out her DS would completely kick off and have a complete meltdown 10mins after the missed meal time whereas my DS was fine with them varying.

I could have never, and would never have wanted to, be one of these parents who was at home from 5 or 6 every night to do the bedtime routine and get the kids asleep in their own beds with their blackout blinds etc "otherwise they won't sleep". I really don't know how or why anyone would want to live like that. They and their children must miss out on so much. . My DS stayed up late if we were doing something special, or slept out at the houses of friends or family etc all the time. I think he was flexible because I was flexible.

I think you can make a rod for your own back being too strict with a routine.

I have DD9m.

We were having an interesting conversation with an acquaintance who has a DD18m. He made us take note of a sleep consultant who they swear by. His DD is asleep by 7(?) on the dot, has to have breakfast at 7:15, 12:30 & 5 and the secret is putting her in her room at 12:50 for the 45minute nap between 1:15-2:00. I asked how they manage when they’re out for the day. He looked at me like I have two heads because she has to nap in her room. If they need /want to go out for the day/evening they have to get a babysitter. He swears by it, good for them.

However, my DD is EBF and I roll with what she wants. When she’s tired, she sleeps, when she’s hungry she eats etc. At the moment she goes to get at 10pm which works brilliantly for us. DH gets home around 7 so we can all eat dinner together then hang out. She only takes ten minutes to go to bed, she rubs her eyes, then nappy/PJs/teeth and then milk until she falls asleep. She does wakes up in the night for milk/comfort (quite often wants to sleep with us) and she sleeps in until 8/9am.

We’ve never had to leave her with anybody as we just take her everywhere with us. She’s been to gigs, countless restaurants, the occasional party, a few city breaks, lots of days out. I’m loving maternity leave as I have all this time to explore with my little buddy.

We get lots of comments on how content she is. I genuinely feel it’s because I react to her needs. I’m happy, not only because my DD is happy but because I get to live life outside trying to get her to nap. At the beginning I did feel like the right thing was to get her into a routine as that’s what everyone says. Honestly, it was stressful, she was stressed, I was stressed trying to get her to sleep. Not my cup of tea.

I just rolled with what worked for her until we found a rhythm and settled naturally into a routine at about 10 months. And by routine I mean she has a bedtime around 7pm, there are things we usually do but we don’t have to do all of them all of the time, it’s flexible. She naps after her dinner during the day, I do that so she can go to sleep with a full tummy but the time of that nap depends on when she eats, which changes depending on whether she is up at 7am or 9am.

I think what I am saying is, don’t worry too much, you will find a flow eventually, keep things flexible and try not to let it run your days too much, good luck OP, it will be a wild ride to start but I can promise you will look back on these early days with a smile and wonder why you worried so much 😊