3 month old bed time 😲

[dontcomeatme]

Okay I'll be honest I'm completely winging life with second DS, he's 13 weeks old, EBF and I have a just turned 2 year old, who is feral, if that's relevant. I've just seen a "recommended routine" for 3 month old babies online and it has structured naps and a set bedtime between 6 and 8pm 😬 I'll be perfectly frank, I often fall asleep with him cluster feeding on the settee and we may go up to bed around 10pm?? Am I an awful mam? If I put him to bed at 6 he would be up again in 2 hours starving! He takes a huge feed and sleeps 10pm till 3/4amish currently.
Even his day time looks absolutely nothing like this, and I know it's an "example", but is anyone else's routine with their baby actually like this? AIBU to think this is either bonkers or PFB vibes? Or do I need to get my finger out my arse and put him to bed 🤦🏻‍♀️ his brother goes to bed strictly for 7pm and then I'm lying feeding till our bed time.

We have a rough routine but that routine also includes bedtime at around 10pm :)

This! What a load of nonsense that “routine”is.

You're on your second child, you should know better than to look at routines made up by so called 'baby experts'. And if you're going to do a routine why on earth would you, as a sleep deprived person, make up one that's more complicated than my Christmas Day routine for feeding 12 people a 4 course meal? I've got teenagers so no longer sleep deprived and I find that routine confusing!

My first child didn't believe in naps at all at 3 month, my second child loved to sleep and put herself in a routine at about a week old (and 16 years later their basic personalities are still the same).I can't even remember what my third child was like but thankfully by DC3 then people no longer try and give you any advice (best reason to have 3DC BTW, everyone respects you for your parenting however much you practice benign neglect).

Do what works for your family, love your children, keep them clean, feed them regularly. If each day you achieve 'none dead, all fed' then that's sufficient, particularly with a baby.

In my experience online nap and sleep routines were a load of crap.

My baby went to bed between 10pm and midnight for months. It was also very late each time we approached dropping a nap.

Some NCT friends put their babies to bed at 6pm. Their babies would be up for the day at 5am. That's not for me. We went for bed late, wake up at a reasonable time between 7-8am.

I don’t think a routine like that is ‘nonsense’, ‘a load of shite’ or ‘nonsense’ like a lot of (quite frankly hysterical sounding) people are saying here. But nor do I think you’re a bad mum or doing the wrong thing by your baby. Happy mum, happy baby – that’s all that matters.

I got my twins on a routine like this from 6 weeks old. It worked very well for them and me. Far from ‘nonsense’. It just suited all of us.

That’s a bit of a myth (very much a myth actually). Those babies were likely waking early for a myriad other reasons. Sleep begets sleep, and the most restorative time of sleep for an infant is between early evening and midnight.

@JaninaDuszejkoi didn't make the routine up, it just came across my news feed in an article about babys routines, my phone is clearly listening to me 😅 thought is was losing the plot when I read it haha

They're supposed to be in the same room as you for all sleep until they're six months anyway to help prevent SIDS, so unless you fancy going to bed when he does I would just ignore it.

The perspectives are just a couple of mams making lighthearted humour out of contradictory advice regarding babies 😊
But it is definitely not safe to leave your baby unattended at this age

That's a load of nonsense so feel free to ignore it and do whatever works for you which will probably change on the daily 😄

Your definitely not a bad mum not to do this - BUT - between 2 and 4 months old I worked really really hard to get my second (16 month age gap) into a 7 pm bedtime routine and it was so worth it. Now the two kids have their bath and bedtime routine from 6-7pm and then at 7pm I can tidy up and relax. I switched to bottle at about 4 months so obviously made it easier but on EBF you can do a nice dream feed and I managed to get the 7pm bedtime roughly working most nights whilst I was still EBF. Basically after their last nap I'd feed them, bathe them then feed them again loads and loads before settling them to sleep.

It is absolutely “fine”. I would suggest 95% of parents have their under 6 month old nap in another room for an hour or 2.
totally nuts to suggest it’s “not fine”.

Whatever works for you now is what you do. That’s it.

What on earth are you rambling about?
A baby having a nap in another room is absolutely not similar to sleep training or putting a bolt on a child’s room.

At 3 months old, my son was still sleeping all day and awake in the night. His body fixed his sleeping pattern without any intervention from me. Do what works for you.

What an unbelievably judgemental message - parenting is hard and just because people don’t make your choices doesn’t mean it’s because they value a couple of glasses of wine more than their child. I (a) made some of those choices myself, (b) did not do it because i wanted a couple of glasses of wine but because it seemed to work well for my children to have a structured routine and (c) would never dream of having a go at parents making different choices within the realm of normal (eg the nhs is against cosleeping as it’s a much larger risk factor for SIDs than all the rest of the issues you mention but I absolutely know loving parents who chose to do that and I have no problem with it).

No, it really isn’t. They’re too young. It’s a SIDS risk.