How do you settle a 3 month old for the night?

[leglebegle]

I am having a nightmare settling my 12 week old. I follow a routine for feeding/sleeping in the day, I have a bedtime routine, yet every night at 7pm after being fed, burped, he's screaming. I feel like I've tried everything. Does anyone have a good way to get them off at 7pm. He is currently tucked up in his cot screaming as we speak. I've run out of ideas.

Maybe he isn't ready for bed at 7. Try abit later. Mine would go down at 9 at this age and then decided to go abit earlier as she got older and by 16 wks was down at 7. Hang in there.

I personally think that 12 weeks is too young to have a bed-time as such. We used to just wait for ds to go to sleep after doing the bath etc.

Have to agree. DD now 6 and a half months and we still don't have a bedtime as such - whenever she's tired between 7 and 8.

so what did you do to get them to sleep? did they just fall asleep and then you put them down?

legle, does it take him long to get to sleep? if it's just a stage that lasts 5-10 minutes before he nods off, i'd urge you not to get too hung up on it.

unlike everyone else, i don't think 12 wks is too early for a structured sort of day/sleep pattern. if you're sure he's tired (as sure as you can ever be, ie he hasn't had a big sleep in the afternoon), fed, burped etc, it may just be that he's one of those babies that has to have a bit of a howl before nodding off. my dd was like this sometimes. she just needed a bit of a scream before shutting down. (now just short of 3, she is now the most fabulous sleeper and was from that point onwards really)

if you cuddle a baby until it drops off i think you're into a whole new kettle of horror. but this is all so personal, everyone's choice reflects what they can cope with.

DH tightly swaddles baby (now 16 wks old), holds his hands down, sh's or sings to him, and sometimes strokes his head. I go play with the older children & it's all over with in 10 minutes.

Working for us...

We used to be with ds until he dropped off, but at 3, he goes to bed really happily. I'm not necessarily of the school of thought that says you are making a rod for your own back.

legle, are you there?

DH is telling me that classical music is very good with DS2... reckons it had to be powerdrills or rock music for DS1, though.

Otherwise agree with Chinchilla. My older 2 are pretty good sleepers, now.

i don't think 12wks is too young for a bedtime routine. ds has had the same routine at bedtime from about 8 weeks. it was the routine that he got himself into though, i just always bathed him at the same time and then put him to bed when he was falling asleep, he gradually started wanting to go to bed at 8 each night.

he gets up at 7am and doesn't sleep much during the day but there i no way he'd be happy going to bed at 7pm, does your ds have to go to bed at that time? why not try putting everything back 30mins or so?

Message withdrawn

THanks for all advice. He doesn't just cry for 5 to 10 mins sadly but would go on all night. Its like an overtiredness thing. He's really tired, yawning, eyes all red, but fights it all the time. I structure his sleep in the day so he's only having about 3 and a half hours, we have resorted to driving him round. The reason I am worried is because we have got into a bad habit of him falling asleep in a swinging chair. I could sit upstairs with him in his cot, which is what I did with my other little boy but I don't have the time now as Ds1 is 2 and a half. I really believe in routine and structure and couldn't cope with just waiting for him to decide to fall asleep every night, I mean what do you do if thats midnight? I can't live my life like that I'm afraid but I know lots of people do and hate things like routine. Each to their own but all the so called experts recommend a bedtime routine, I just wondered what every one else's magic trick was as my swinging chair routine is a bad habit to get into ......

oh poor you, legle. so you think he's got into a bad habit with the swinging chair, and so when he's put down in his cot he screams even though he's totally tired? is that what you mean?

know exactly where you're coming from, with regards to routines and not wanting to sit with him. well, it just sounds like you have to get through the pain barrier with this one, then. he WON'T scream forever. maybe experiment with yurtgirl's idea, of putting him down before he's totally on his knees -- rather than letting him get overtired?

you sound sure he is tired, that's 3/4 of the battle, no?

No sorry, I agree with most of the others that 12 weeks is still a newborn and as such newborns tend not to suit a fixed bed time. Yes routines are vital, but you have to be realistic and therefore flexible with very young babies.

Both my children often would not drop off to sleep until 21.00 / 22.00 when they were this age, and yet by 4-5 months they had started to develop a pattern with both their feeds and their sleeps, so that by that age I could put them down at 19.30 ish drowsy (but not asleep), and they would send themselves off.

I don't know why your little boy is so difficult to settle, but my firstborn was a little trickier than my second and I used a CD of lullabies for her with good effect. She started to associate the lullabies CD with sleep and it improved her ability to nod off independently.