Looking for ideas and suggestions please to help us start a framework of bedtime routine for our sleep-resistant 16 week old baby.
At the moment we have no routine, he's overtired and overstimulated by the end of the day, he only naps on the move or on my shoulder and not for more than 45 minutes (but needs longer than this as is perpetually tired). Come 5 I am making dinner, with him in the sling shouting and straining and whingeing (and rocking, even as I type, impressed?! ) to keep him calm while DP gets in (lights/noise when darkness falls and another person arrives cause great excitement), then darkened room for BF and grobag. It can take around 2 hours rocking/feeding before I can leave him, sometimes more, and then he wakes again after 45 minutes usually.
He sleeps in a cotbed sidecar next to our bed(often only way to get him asleep lying down is feeding him to sleep). I've tried leaving him alone to see if he'll nod off - this is generally met with hysterical escalating screaming which then takes an age to calm him down from. Twice recently he's woken from sleep at night but settled himself with just my hand on him, but although crying/shouting I don't think he's been properly awake on these occasions.
We had a few days a month ago now where I managed to feed him to sleep on our bed then come downstairs for the night, but this has not happened since with any success. He wakes after 45 minutes unfailingy. I have tried hovering as the critical time approaches but maybe not tried hard enough, my nerves and patience are shot and I'm kind of sick of it all .
I feel like it takes so long to get him to sleep, and I do much of it because (A) He often needs fed to sleep (B) DP gets him wound up and (C) DP doesn't seem to have the precise swaying motion required to get him off to sleep. I therefore resent DS for taking up all of my day and all of my night, I have no time alone, and if I want a quiet night I have to go to bed with him .
Therefore maybe a routine whereby he knows what happens when, and can predict it, and knows it will end in sleep, will over time help him to wind down a bit. He has hysterical crying most evenings at some point because he's just too tired and overstimulated to switch off, and I'm honestly worried DP or I will end up hurting him because our patience is shot to bits and he's so very, very frustrating. At least with steps of a routine to follow we have something concrete, and are doing something more than merely surviving day to day as we are just now. I go back to work in a couple of months and really need this to be improving by then or I think we're heading for serious problems between DP and I and between DS and both of us.
So, what would you knowledgeable and experienced people suggest? Baths are great cos he loves them, but I think he gets way too wound up by them, cue lots of kicking/shouting/mad eyes by the time he's getting his PJs on. Ditto massage. Might cope with a story or song provided in darkness, but not sure. Need to DO something, but not enough to excite him IYSWIM?