Advice on bedtime routine - 4 mo

[MrsJangles]

Hello
We have a four month old DD (1st time parents) and I'm looking for some opinions / advice on bedtime routines. She is very good in terms of sleeping, and we have always given her a bath, feed then bed, since probably about 6-8 weeks old and she is down by 7pm. She is often very whiney in the evenings, despite having sufficient naps in the day, and I'm finding that while she is fine IN the bath, getting her dried, dressed, etc afterwords is a nightmare - she screams and screams, and despite creating a calm relaxing environment for her she seems to get so upset and distressed.

I'm worried that if this continues, she'll grow to dread the evening routine - I want her to enjoy bathtime and it should be relaxing for her not stressful.

Does anyone else have this problem? Is it worth altering the routine so she has a bath at a different time of day instead, say, in the morning; or anyone have any suggestions on how to make it more enjoyable for her? Or is this simply normal baby behaviour at this age?

Any suggestions or advice?

My dd (now 7m) screamed when she got out of the bath, so now what we do is let her take one of her bath toys into the bedroom whilst we dress her, and also gently play with her, make her smile and now put her nursery rhymes CD on so that we can sing with her.

Could she be over tired by that time too? Maybe try bringing her bedtime forward half and hour? My dd is out for the count by 6.15 each day.

my thought was the same - that she might already be overtired by that time. How much is she sleeping in the day?
Otherwise, is the bath and bathroom warm enough? I have the bathwater the same temp for my DS as for myself, more or less. She may be very sensitive to being cold or just to being dressed and undressed (which is fairly normal but more acute in some babies than others). I agree with Natzer - do whatever you can to make her happy during that transition - warm towel - toothbrush to chew on - even her bottle straight away while you dry and dress her? and sing! it is my fallback whenever DS's are fussing.

Hi ladies
Thank you for the suggestions. Natzer, I think I will try bringing her bedtime forward as she is quite overtired by the time I get her down to bed - she often has a nap around 6pm for 15 min or so in order to get through the rest of the evening.
Mud - she gets probably around 4 hours sleep in the day, she's not a brilliant daytime sleeper and needs alot of coaxing to take naps etc. I take your point too about the water - will try it a bit wamer (although we keep her room at a nice warm temp).
Fingers crossed tonight is a bit better!

When you say 'sufficient' naps in the day - how many does she have? I wouldn't let her nap later than about 5-5.30 for her third nap. Both mine were on three naps a day at this point - awake for about 90m-2hrs at a time and then having a nap.

16 weeks is still very small, and tbh the 'routine' won't make much difference at this time as her brain is too small to form the memories that make routine useful. She probably doesn't need a bath every night in any case.

There's also a lot of developmental stuff going on at this time and four months is a classic time for sleep regression and general difficulty with sleep so she may well need more help to go to sleep in the evening than she has done. Do you feed her to sleep, ever?

OP, my DS was the same until about a month ago. He is now 9 months. He loves his bath, but about an hour before and while getting him dressed after he would scream blue murder. I was convinced it was overtiredness until one day when he had his last nap between 5.30 and 6pm and at 6.30pm he was rubbing his eyes and whinging (he had already slept a lot before that last nap too).

He now has his bath at 7pm and is asleep by 7.30pm. Any time sooner and he is awake at 5-5.30am the following day and again asleep by 7am!

About a month ago, it was like the penny dropped and one night we had no crying. The same the following night, and it's been the same ever since. I think he just grew out of it, and this was at the same time as he started crawling, so he is happy to just crawl everywhere with a grin on his face until bath time.

I would definitely try bringing her bedtime forward a bit. My 10mo has a bath at 6pm then bottle,book,and is asleep before 7pm. She has also always cried when she comes out of the bath. I've always thought that its because her bath has tired her out so much. I get through it by singing and giving her a toy to distract her!

You could always try a split feed before and after her bath, we did that when ours found bathtime a stressful. As it happens we now use it to delay bedtime to the normal tone if he's a bit grouchy

Hi
I started her routine tonight at 6pm instead and it was better - she still cried but I was able to distract her more easily with singing and cuddles and even got some smiles! She went down about 6:45pm, I managed to get a book in as well. Was much nicer too as since I started earlier it didn't feel so rushed.

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions - I'll see how the next few nights go! now I've just got to try to find a way to get her to sleep past 5:30am!

jangles so did she wake earlier because she went to bed earlier? or is that a normal wake up time?

One thing I have done which I'm not sure is right or not is putting a toy (non sufficating) in her cot when we go to bed, then when she wakes up she plays with it for at least half an hour before she makes noise and we go to her. Normally a toy that is connected to her cot bars. In fact sometimes she plays for a while and then goes back to sleep. It has definitely helped us with the recent clock change.