Baby's evening routine - ideas needed

[firsttimemothergoose]

My DD is 5 weeks old and is doing well in terms of a routine. We haven't really planned it but she seems to have settled into a pattern. However, we have been cluster feeding all evening and by this I mean we can go from 4pm to 9pm some days! DH gives her a bottle of expressed milk at about 10pm so I can get ready for bed then she and I go to bed together.
I would like to get into a better evening routine but don't know whet to start.
I'm thinking about a bath at about 7pm and then a feed and put her down to sleep. Hoping that we will get time to cook and eat dinner, DH is the cook in our house, and then a bottle when she wakes between 9 and 10 (hopefully) before going up to bed.

Is this realistic?

At the moment, she sleeps from 10.30pm ish to about 3am and then wakes again at about 5pm before we get up at 7am. By going to bed earlier, can I expect to be awake much earlier in the morning? 7am works nicely and I don't want this to change ideally.

Like I said, I have no idea where to start in terms of a routine and would like to see what other people do. Please let me know your routine. What time do you aim to out your DC to bed?

Thanks!

I think cluster feeding all evening at that age is completely normal and par for the course. I wouldn't try and put a baby that young into a routine at all, everything changes so quickly at this stage anyway. Next week you might find her sleeping and feeding pattern is totally different.

You can try but lots of babies take a while to settle into an earlier bedtime. Nothing to stop you doing a bedtime routine (bath, massage, feed perhaps) at 7ish, but baby might still want to cluster feed all evening until they are a bit older.

Ps I agree with pp that things change on a weekly basis at that age so easier to go with the flow.

In my opinion it is far, far too soon for her to be in a routine.

That said, not reason why you can't introduce a bathtime at a specific time if you want to. She may not decide to go to bed at that time and may continue feeding, but it would do no harm to establish bathtime in the evening.

Another option is to arrange a 'order of things' in the evening, but be movable on the time. So for example you cluster feed for as long as it takes. When she seems to start settling, DH baths her and gives her the bottle you have arranged (or breastfeed, if that is your preference) then bed. If you do the same thing, but at times that suit your daughter, it will be easier to move this whole routine to a better time when she is older.

DS1 is 10 wks and we started a daily bath at 7pm when he was around 4 weeks. He has never really cluster fed in the evenings but he can be really grumpy at that time so we thought it best to start some kind of routine as it seemed like he was getting overtired. It's worked really well for us. DH home around 6.45pm, bath at 7pm, feed immediately after, then bed. DS is pretty good at self settling if he has a dummy so he's normally asleep in around 15 mins. Then that's him until around 12.30am. Then he'll go to around 4.30am and then to 7am.

I started a bed time routine about 7 weeks it took a couple of weeks to get into it but I stuck in there and it did work and still does we have had ups and downs with bedtime but if you do the same no matter what they do get it.

I FF ds but am ttc #2 and want to try BF this time I was quite concerned about cluster feeding and not keen on the idea of spending hours every evening feeding (I know from ds I need some peace at night) so I spoke to a few friends who have BF and the HV put me in touch with someone to chat with about it and I don't think that cluster feeding is unavoidable I haven't gone into detail about it but if your not happy doing it then you could maybe speak to someone about getting your feeds in a better routine. I'm sure i'll be flamed and rubbished but it's what i've been told.