New bedtime routine needed! Please share yours.

[ThePowerOfCake]

DD is 11mo and breastfed morning and night with one bottle of formula in the day. We've never had much of a bedtime routine and have fed to sleep (or nearly) because it was easy and it worked. I'm planning on moving over to cows milk at around 12 months and I just have no idea where to start with a proper bedtime routine.

I'd love to hear what other people do as I don't know many other parents with children of a similar age.

For reference this is how the evening goes:
6:30pm - collect DD from Nanny/ Grandma/ Nursery
7pm- Arrive home, into pjs and grobag, brush teeth
7:15pm - Boob
7:30pm - Into cot and pretty much straight to sleep, then sleeps through until around 6am.

I don't want her to go down much later so need to keep things fairly short. Baths happen on weekends and my day off in the week!

Any suggestions?

If you want to keep it short then it is pretty tricky to add anything other than a story. As she sleeps through then this short routine obviously works for her!

Ours goes like
6pm bath, brush tooth
6:20 ish into gro bag, clean nappy, pyjamas.
6:30 final feed then story
Final cuddle and into bed
the final part where she goes into bed without screaming is a new addition

Usually asleep by 6:45-7. DD is 8 months old.

Read a book whilst doing last feed? Then when DC weans it either becomes just a bedtime story or story + cup drink. That wouldn't lengthen your current routine but get the bedtime story in as a habit for the future.

DS is 11.5 months and we've just moved to cows milk. He had 6 or 7oz morning and night and sometimes mid-afternoon depending on what he's had for lunch.

Our bedtime routine is
7pm storybooks & milk on the sofa
7:30 - 7:45ish bath inc teeth clean
7:45 nappy / pjs / grobag etc in bedroom with star lamp projector and lavender oil on the aroma-stone
7:50 songs, cuddle & down in the cot drowsy
8pm asleep

We've done basically exactly this since 8 weeks old and it's utterly ingrained.

Why do you need a routine if what you're doing works? As she takes a bottle in the day you should be able to just swap the boob for bottle of cows milk at night. The only thing I'd change is teeth cleaning after milk. I know people feel the need to drop bottles, but if it's just one a day that won't have much impact on the mouth shape thing, and she won't be dependent on them forever.
We do it differently but have more time:
6pm - dinner
Wind down in the lounge (stories/ nursery rhymes or peter rabbit on iPlayer)
6.45pm - bath
7ish - stories whilst getting changed
7.15ish - bottle of cows milk
Teeth, cuddles, down.

Don't worry about feeding to sleep. That's your routine. She won't be any more dependent on it than someone who needs a particular song/ mobile etc. She'll move on in her own time.

I'm happy enough feeding to sleep at the moment but once she's having cow's milk I will want to brush her teeth after milk. I know plenty of people don't but we have pretty awful teeth in the family and so this is important to me. I'm just not sure whether she'll still go to sleep easily without it being straight after feeding if she hasn't got a set routine in place.

Thanks for sharing what you guys do. It's nice to see that routines vary a lot depending on what suits the baby and the parents!

Mine always fed to sleep but now with a bottle he feeds, shoves his thumb in ready to drop off, I pull hos thumb out and clean his teeth quickly and then cuddle to sleep.