Going to relatives house at night with 7mo

[sharond101]

We've had lots of invites to relatives homes recently for get together at night. 7mo DS is invited too. DS has been out of his normal sleeping routine over Christmas with the desire to play rather than sleep and is showing signs of overtiredness. He will not sleep if there are fun things going on or people around. On Christmas Day we were at my Mums and planned to put him down there and that was a disaster. We ended up bringing him home at 8pm when he wouldn't go to sleep there and he was still awake at 11pm. He then woke at 5am. This one day upset his schedule so much he i only now getting back to his normal bedtime and wake times. We have thus turned down these invites but there is another this weekend and I wonder is there a way? What do you do?

We used to take all our own bedding (so it had the right smells) and I always fed to sleep so it wasn't too bad. Doesn't sound like your DS likes it though!

put in buggy and rock to sleep? in the long run it's a shame to miss out on things because of a little disruption when they are so young - I was on holiday in spain this summer and they have babies and small children up at all hours - I think we worry too much here!

I assume dd won't sleep during the evening, and that I'll be holding her on my lap for most of the time to stop her squawking. This also means that when she does fall asleep, it coincides more with when I retire too.
A fair bit of feeding to sleep and waking is normal so I try to insist someone takes her in the morning so I can have some extra kip. Works reasonably well when ds age 4 doesn't wake the whole house by being too scared to go to the loo at 4am...

She's 11mo now but any sleep pattern she gets into tends to change within a week whether I like it or not - at 7mo he's likely to change his patterns a lot anyway.

what time does she usually go to bed? Could you maybe take her upstairs away from the excitement at that time, bath, cuddle, quiet time etc then into bed. OR could either you or your partner not go to the gathering?

Thank you. He normally beds at 8pm. Unfortunately where the gathering is on Friday there is no facility for me to bed him there. They only have one bedroom with a double bed in it. I am really caught up on his sleep wanting to do the best for him. I have just enquired about a water babies class and found out it's at the time he has his morning nap so now am worrying about how we will manage to go to that.

I feel your pain, DS (8mo) was such an appalling sleeper when he was younger that now I am very reluctant to do anything that will cock it up! He does tend to settle reasonably well at other people's houses (today he went down for two naps at grandma's house like clockwork, without a whimper-never does that for me, little tinker!) but I am a routine fiend. That is very limiting in itself to be honest. I don't have the answer, but i know that I probably wouldn't go. Which makes me a complete loser...

Any chance you could get a babysitter and leave him behind? Or just go and accept that you'll pay for it later!

tumbletumble I suspect he is the reason we are invited as everyone finds him so adorable (not that I like to sing his praises )