DH wants 2.8 DC to have a bedtime routine

[DuelingFanjo]

I still breastfeed.
We co-sleep.
He no longer naps in the day.

DS feeds to sleep still. My husband as decided we need a routine. Some nights DS will have fallen asleep in the car on the way home from nursery, other nights he will fall asleep while feeing around seven to eight pm. Other nights he will be up gone nine pm.

I think my husband means we should do rapid return or something. There's no chance of DS Avignon his own room at the moment.

Occasionally I do get frustrated by the very late nights but mostly we go with the flow.

What would you do? How woud you achieve 'a routine'?

i don't think that you need a routine. we've never had them. tried and failed... i am just not a routine kind of a person

you do what works for you surely? obviously you have to come to some kind of a compromise with yout DH if he's very unhappy with the current situation, but what other people do with their kids on here (or anywhere else) doesn't really matter does it??

i have a friend whose kids never went to bed til around 9.30pm. she was happy with that, they were happy with it. dad is Italian and it's quite normal over there for v. late bedtimes apparently. Once the kids started school they started getting tired earlier and so their bedtime gradually moved forwards.

going with the flow is just fine IMO! don't do anything you don't feel comfortable with

I agree thisisyesterday. I think we'll see how this goes and how consistent we can be. Thanks again everybody for not having a complete go at me.

Sounds good. We had very similar conversations a few months ago. DH wanted 'a routine'; I wanted 'some freedom'. For us, the best way to do that was to get it so that DS is always in bed by 8 and that either of us could do bedtime. It's taken some effort on both parts, but roughly our evenings now go like this:

Get home
Food eaten on sofa in front of telly (I know, I know, but it gives us all downtime and a chance to cuddle DS)
Bath / Shower
BF in 'big bed'
Move to 'mine bed' for book / bottle
Lots of cuddles, books, singing

We've finally got it so that either of us can do the last two stages. The way we did it was through lots of positive encouragement ("you're in your big bed! Wow!" "Oh you're so clever being able to get into that bed on your own!" and other such annoying phrases), a ridiculous amount of cuddling (I couldn't do rapid return so stuck with making bed a nice place to be so that he wouldn't want to get out) and a shared language ("night night" is overused in our house, but it is clear exactly what it means)

Sounds good DF.

The beauty of a really good routine is simplicity and flexibility. Once a good routine is in place, as long as you do the same basic things in the same order, then you have got a routine which you can stick to whether you're staying with family, out late, needing an early bedtime, have visitors etc. And routine is the key to getting them to "just go to sleep" :)

For example, ours is loosely dinner, trampoline time (I know ) or Wii if it's rainy, upstairs for a bath, jamas on, brush teeth, bed, stories, lights out (and a story CD). This is for both DC.

If we've been out all day, maybe it's late/they're tired, so we whizz through upstairs, quick wash with a flannel, jamas, teeth, bed, straight to story CD with lights out.

If one of them really needs an early night the other will get a long bath while the tired one goes to bed first.

Good luck!

Does your son not get tea at nursery? In which case only a quick snack should be needed when he gets home rather than having a meal on the table. This would be less stressful, and you can the eat with your DH when your son is in bed.

Best bit of advice I have been given re: parenting. Choose what you want to do and be consistent - it can be a pain at the start but soon enough children learn the lie of the land & in my experience they often really benefit from having the security if a routine.

Bedtime routine is the easiest to install - food, bath, stories milk bed. I have been doing it since 8weeks.

Obviously if you and your husband are happy then it's up to you, but I don't understand why a child of your son's age needs feeding to sleep and he certainly doesn't need to feed during the night. However it doesn't sound like your husband is happy any more, perhaps because he is sleeping in the spare room rather than your son.

I would bathe him, into pyjamas, feed and put him into bed (awake), night night it's time to go to sleep, kiss and leave him to settle himself to sleep. However I would have done it from 3-4 months old.

Yes, he gets tea and a snack so we do 't always make him dinner. We try to include him in our mealtimes in the days when he has not fallen asleep on the way home.

Re the feeding to sleep, that's just how things are and always have been and I will probably continue to breastfeed until my son self weans. DH could sleep with us if he wanted, I ask him to every night but he snores very loudly and invariably I end up nudging him. He has chosen to sleep in the spare room because he wants to get some sleep. I think if he did sleep with me I would end up going to the spare room myself.

Actually, I think 9pm is way too late for a child that age who hasn't had a nap. The real issue is that either you have a regular bedtime and stick to it, or you have a more freeform existence, with the child up till it suits you to put him to bed, which also means that you will find it difficult to get evenings to yourself. It's lovely in the summer to be able to stay out a bit later, at the allotment or with friends, but the downside is that a 7pm bedtime on the nights when you are at home will be more difficult.
I'd stop the feeding to go to sleep right now. Carry on feeding by all means, but at a specific time, maybe in the night if he wants it, but not as a thing to get him to sleep. He needs to learn to go to sleep by himself. It might take time, but no reason why it needs to be too unpleasant.
I learnt this the hard way. With DS1, I'd feed him, he'd snooze, then as soon as I inched out of the room he'd scream. Cue gentle murmuring from me, stories, songs etc for 2 or 3 hours. Nightmare. Then tried sleep training - horrible for both of us. He was dreadful at bedtime till DS2 was born, and having a baby brother in his room was all positive. With DS2, I'd feed him at 7, put him to bed, say goodnight cheerfully and leave. he then slept, maybe waking for feed in the small hours. DS3 same thing. I put it down to meaning it and being more confident with the younger 2.
My point is, he doesn't need to be breastfed in order to go to sleep. Get him out of that expectation as soon as you can, so that when you eventually stop breastfeeding, at whatever point suits you, it won't mean traumatic bedtimes.

It's ok. I am fine with feeding him. Some days he feeds for two seconds and falls asleep, others he feeds and feeds and then rolls over and lies there while I stroke his back. Sometimes he just falls asleep on DH.

Oops I said "rod for your own back" earlier

The need for a routine is such a personal thing. I would be losing my marbles if I had a nearly three year old still up and feeding in the night. The erratic bedtimes would drive me bonkers too.

I don't know how you make a child stay in bed. Mine just did and still do. We have dinner, bath, teeth, story and bed and they know what to expect, I suppose. With three kids its non negotiable.

Op - if you are happy the way you are then don't change. IMO, It would probably be a good thing to get the sleeping through sorted in the next year - before starting school.

By the way rapid return/gradual withdrawal works really well for us. It took 3 night of ds messing about and crying for me to be able to say good night and leave him to fall asleep without a fuss. Ovcasionlly he will play up and I will sit in the room ignoring him and ensuring he doesn't get out of bed. This isn't often and he's asleep in half hour. Just telling you what it was like for us! It's really improved ds sleep as well- he was so used to being patted to sleep he would wake frequently in the night and couldn't self settle. He now sleeps amazingly and I wish I had done it sooner. He's 2.5.

Agree with DH, routine is good for everyone.
Bed at 7 here from small babies.

You need your evening as well.

Posted too soon. I don't think you need to night feed at all. I would stop the feeding to sleep at his age. Swop it for stories.

My ds is one of the best sleepers I know at 7, he never has nightmares, never gets out of bed, settles back to sleep if something random like a smoke alarm wakes him. He fed to sleep until he was over 3. It really, really isn't a passport to sleep problems. Breastfeeding is not the problem here, the mismatch of expectations is.

OP sounds like you are doing a great job of keeping the lines of communication open between you and dh.

"DS gets ten plus hours sleep a night, DH gets eight, I am lucky if I get three hours in a row."

My ds is just 1 and won't sleep for more than 3 hrs (he has tt and we're waiting for his op). I'm beside myself with tiredness after a year. How have you survived 2.8 yrs?!

I'd be trying to establish a n earlier consistent routine just for my sanity! (and I think my relationship with dp would suffer without time to focus on each other tbh)

Hi dueling. I have a 2.9yr old ds and until about three months ago fed to sleep. We wanted to try to get him to fall asleep on his own as it was taking longer and longer to feed to sleep and he would wake as soon as I put him down. One night, I HAD to go out and DH had to do bedtime. He read a few stories and then lay down on the floor and held his hand til he fell asleep. It took about an hour the first time and less and less after that. We stuck with DH doing bed for about a month and then we started alternating depending on what we were doing that evening. Now we can both do bedtime although ds prefers his dad. Forgot to say we moved to sitting in chair in his room after about a week. We still stay with him until he falls asleep. After the first day or so he stopped asking for the boob.

He always comes into our bed if he wakes in the night or when he wakes in the morning. Three days ago he stopped asking for milk and I think he may have now self weaned.

You will get there. He will get there. It will happen when its right for you all. Good luck.

Thanks again for the new replies.

I have always burned the candle at both ends so I am pretty hardy when it comes to broken sleep but really I do dream (no pun intended) about what it would be like to get 6 or 7 hours without interruption. He did actually sleep through for three nights on the trot a few weeks ago but then came down with chicken pox so it seems it was just him being ill that resulted in sleeping through. On a good night he will wake just once and root about for a bit then go back to sleep. I did wonder if he might be hungry so I encourage him to drink a glass of milk and a snack before bed.

When DS wakes at night it is usually just to root about for boob and sometimes he does it without even waking up properly. We've just come out of a stage where he seemed to want to be permanently attached to my boobs ALL NIGHT LONG which was bloody hard work and I did attempt on a couple of occasions to refuse the breast but this just ended up meaning he woke up fully and then took ages to go back to sleep so I decided it was easier to stay as we were and hope it passed, which it did.

However I do think it might be a good idea to start knocking the night-time feeding on the head so I think we will start with the routine being more firmly enforced and then move on to trying the gentle night weaning or the Jay Gordon method.

He was asleep by 9pm last night and awake at 8am, so that's 11 hours which I hope is enough.

I am hoping he will self-wean soon but knowing my luck he will still be feeding when he starts school.

oh and - yes, he is very used to me doing the bed times and so DH finds it hard to settle him if I am out. The result being that I don't go out often. I would like to change this. We are going to start by reinforcing the idea that he can't keep going downstairs to be with daddy but daddy will come up and read to him on the bed until he asks for mummy and then mummy will come up. Just to get it drummed in that he can't keep asking for one or the other as an excuse to get downstairs.

He is also very aware of daytime and morning time, so if it's still light outside he says 'but it's not dark outside, it's not bed time' so I am hoping when the clocks go back and the evenings are darker he might go to bed earlier.

I would say a routine is definitely a good thing. It gives the child a cue and then knows what to expect...they protest less or not at all because they are already expecting that they are going to go to bed after a short series of events. It does not have to be complicated at all...a simply change into pjs, a story, brush teeth, milk....whatever you decide...just need to do it in the same sequence every night even if it's not at the same time. For us (DS is 2.5), we get home from work/nursery about 5:30pm, dinner around 6 or 6:30...play for an hour or so or do something with him, or stick him out in the garden if I've got some things to get on with...bath at 7:30 or 8pm, milk while watching his favourite youtube playlist of butterflies from around the world vidoes, and then straight up to bed. At this point, he knows he's meant to get into bed and stay there. i'm not saying he never gets up, he does, but on most nights, neither myself nor DH have to go up and get to go back into bed.
He gets up about 7, and usually has a nap of 1-2 hours at nursery still.

Just devise a short, easy routine for him (and yourself!) and stick with it...it will work! Promise!

I so feel for you, you must be exhausted. My SIL has similar issues with her DD who is early 3 and co sleeping.

I'm no expert as DS is only 3 months and I didn't live with my step daughter until she was 4 but she used to be much harder to settle if she hadn't had a daytime nap. We used to make sure that at the same time every day (around 2pm) we would have some 'quiet time' - dark room, cuddle, face stroke (or whatever) and lay down. Sometimes she would sleep, sometimes not but at least she had a 'rest period' every day. Do the nursery do similar?

Then I'd aim for same bedtime every day. If he gets up to speak to daddy, so be it, daddy says 'night night DS' and back to bed. Read a story, sing a song, feed to sleep. If he asks for more story say 'not now darling, it's time for sleep now' and just lay in quiet room until he sleeps.

We also found with DSD that if she was really wired count downs wrk well - 10 minutes till bedtime, 5 mins etc etc.

One of us still has to lay with her after story for 5 mins now (she's 8) and then she goes to sleep once we've gone fine.

I do think it is important, for all of you.

Good luck.

Thank you :)

We have had a week of attempting a routine which has gone fairly well. truth is that when DH isn't there (if he's out) then it is easier because DS knows there's no point calling for him. So far, on the nights when he's not fallen asleep on the way home, we have been consistent with not letting him go back downstairs despite him still using every excuse in the book ('I'm hungry', 'I need the potty', 'I need to play with my toys', 'I want my daddy') and he's mostly been in asleep bed by half eight. I would like to make it earlier but working on that.

Work on getting it earlier gradually I say. Well done, look forward to your child free evenings!!!

Well done. Have you tried not letting him sleep on the way home with singing or music or something. Or is he just wrecked?