Please help me get dd into a routine

[SleepyMummy31]

I have a week to put a stop to the chaos but I don't know where to start. I have a 3 month old baby and I am starting a college course 2 nights a week next week. My MIL will be watching the 2 kids...my toddler who is easy (bed at 7pm, always been in a good routine)and the baby who is 3 months and so far has been impossible to get into a routine. All attempts to get her to bed at 7pm have been met with a very alert baby who will scream and scream. But I need to get her into a bedtime routine this week so I can go off to my course and not be totally preoccupied thinking about my poor baby all distressed back home. I want to know she is just sleeping soundly while I am out.

Please advise me.

It's amazing how different siblings can be!

How much day time sleep is she getting at the moment?
What is her longest stretch of day time sleep?

Sometimes she'll just catnap on and off all day, 10 mins here 20 mins there. Other days she'll have a long sleep for 3 hours!

From 10.30pm until 5am she sleeps in her cot beside our bed. Feed at 5am then sleeps until 8am then its downstairs and in her bouncy chair all day. So from 8am until 10pm its all higgledy piggledy!

Will your baby definitely be distressed if you leave her awake with MIL? My DD was about 5 months before she had a proper bedtime, before then evenings were just a mix of nap time and awake time, before she went to bed with us for a last feed about 10.30pm.

OK - that sounds just like my eldest two when left to their own devices.

What worked for us was this:

Decide on a time when you want her to start the day. Presumably 8am.
From 9.30am onwards watch her really carefully for any signs of tiredness - you need to try and catch her at the glazed eye stage before she starts yawning. (This is hard to do at first but the first yawn will do). Then put her to bed in a quiet, dark room and settle her to sleep by whatever means needed.
Make a note of the time she was awake for as you must not let her go longer than this at any point in the day.
Hopefully she'll wake up hungry and you can feed her and then keep her awake for another 1 1/2 - 2hours.
Then resettle as before.
This time you are aiming for the long stretch - i.e. something approaching the 3 hours she has occasionally managed before.
If she wakes up sooner try feeding her in the darkened room and resettling her in her cot. Don't get her up at the first wimper.
You should then be able to have two more wakeful stretches before it's bed time. My dd2 could only manage 1hr and 1/2 wakeful periods which meant that at 3 months she had had 4 wakeful periods by 5.30pm and we ended up putting her to bed for the night then with no harm done.
Before bed it's nice to include a routine with feeding / bathing and feeding in the dark before settling to get her in the mood.

You might be amazed at how much sleeping she can do. But it's very good for them - helps their brains grow. And will be very good for you to have your evenings back too I'm sure.

Really HTH. Good luck with it.

definitely recommend the bed/ bath/ milk routine - really helps to get them settled.

I started it about 5pm with DS with a small feed. Bathtime was then at about. After feed he then went under his gym for a kick about without his nappy on and a bit of tummy time (used to be quite handy in bringing up some burps that way!). Bathtime started at 5.45pm with bath then a massage. That was usually finished by about 6.15ish. Once dressed it was into the nursery with the lights dimmed for bedtime feed. At 12 weeks DS usually conked out towards the end of the feed and he was transferred into his cot usually by 6.45 at the latest fast asleep. He would then sleep through until his 10.30ish feed which would be a kind of dream feed and a nappy change at that point. Not sure if you are bf or not - by this point I was doing combined feeding so this probably helped me to stick to a fairly rigid routine for the evening.

Daytime naps - at 3 months DS usually had 9.30ish to about 10.15 then 12.00 to 2.30 and then a short nap from about 4.30 to 5.00pm. He used to settle ok in his cot or pram for the earlier naps but I used to take him out for the later nap in his sling (just because I used to love watching him sleep and it was lovely to have that snuggle with him) for a short walk. His feeds were 7am ish, a top up before 9.30 nap, 11.30am then 2.30pm, 5.00pm, 6.15pm and then 10.30pm. You can probably tell I'm a bit of a control freak!

If it helps though although I started the bedtime routine when he was about a week old the rest of it I didn't start until he was about 11 weeks old and it took about a week for it to all fall into place with very little upset at all so it can be done.

Good luck and I HTH.

I'm afraid i have no advice but am watching with interest as I have a simillar problem. DS is 16 weeks and has never gone to sleep at 7pm. He has datime naps rougly as described by ezma and I do the bath massage feed thing starting around 6ish but he has no idea this is his bed time routine as he never goes to sleep afterwards! He sometimes manages about 8.30 after 90 mins of singing patting etc or if give up and take him downstairs he is an overtired mess!

All ideas appreciated