When do you start with bedtime?

[Sparrowlegs248]

I keep reading posts with people putting their baby to bed. My DS is only 11 days old so realise I'm getting ahead of myself, but wondrous when you start putting to bed? Currently DS is up with us until we go upstairs anytime between 9 - 11pm. I feed him around 10 - 11 and he goes in his basket. I feed him as and when he wakes (2.30 - 3 & 4 - 5 on a good night!)

I started trying to get a proper routine in place from about 7 weeks. It was pretty loose though so bedtime was at about 8.30/9 at first and gradually got earlier. By 16 weeks it was 7pm.

Still woke 2-3 times a night for a year though - but it was nice to have a proper evening before going to bed myself and gearing up for the night feeds.

When you say bedtime does that mean you put your baby upstairs in your room whilst you were downstairs? I'm asking because I'm confused by the guidance that says a baby should sleep in the same room as its mum for the first six months.

By time DS a week old we'd naturally gravitated to a bed time in his cot at about 7 pm after a big feed. Lights out, door closed (good baby camera). Any feeds etc after that treated like night feeds so minimal light, no chatting etc. Took a week or so to establish it - took maybe 10 - 20 minutes of soothing/put down pick up during this time, and whilst he still needed fed a few hours later it was nice to have a couple of hours adult time in the evening to have a meal etc. There were a few nights when someone would need to go back up (the most common problem was him falling asleep before being full enough - would wake a short time later looking for the rest of his dinner!) but they were pretty rare thankfully.

It was a sanity saver for us.

Emma321q - I didn't take that to mean they weren't to leave your side for 6 months?

I had a great camera - could see him breathing - diligent about checking room temperature etc.

Good that's what I was hoping!!!!

I'm sure someone will set us straight if I'm wrong!

Would love to know more about what baby monitor you used - I'm feeling very overwhelmed by the selection that is available.

Not actually a baby monitor - following reviews on Amazon we plumped for a Foscam wireless camera which uses the house wireless network. It was much less expensive and really good - its an infrared camera so can see in dark, there's an app so we monitor it on phone, it has a very sensitive microphone. Don't know how simple it is to set up, we had no problems but DH quite techy.

I think around 8 weeks both times. Both my babies started showing signs of major overtiredness by 9pm so I went with their cues and started outting them to bed rather than keeping them in living room with us until their last feed. Both dropped their 11pm feed soon after that.

It wasn't something I planned so much as a reaction to our current routine not working for them anymore so responding to their needs.

When they were very young it was when they naturally fell asleep for their longest stretch. 10 - 11.

About 6 weeks both times. And both times worked well and wished I'd done it earlier.

So you put them upstairs to bed then? I am one who assumed that was a no go, given the sleeping in the same room guidelines. I'm not sure I feel entirely comfortable with it.

We do have a monitor, as yet unused as he is in the same room as us all the time. Or me at least. Apart from occasional trips to the look etc.

I have the health visitor today so will speak to her too. Thanks for all the replies, I am a first time mum and need to all this baby stuff!

We started at about 2-3 weeks. At first very loosely. So sometime about 30 mins after a feed at 6 pm, we would do a nice massage in a dim room, take DS for a warm bath for a few minutes, then come back to the room all wrapped up- get changed, read the same story every night, big breastfeed and then down for the night. For us the key was that from then on, no matter how many times he fed (and during growth spurts, he was often up an hour later and feeding every hour in the early days), he was always fed in the bedroom in the dark, and all nappy changes were in dim lighting.

So my first goal was for him to be able to distinguish day from night- so we kept the blinds down and the room dark from 7 pm to 7 am. It was an utter pain because I was often stuck in the bedroom for long stretches, but it eventually worked out because by Week 6, the day/night difference was sorted.

By Week 10 He was sleeping for a much longer stretch after that 7 pm feed, and had 'got' the idea of bedtime. And even when he woke for a feed, so say 12, 3 and 5, would go back to sleep immediately. My next goal, was for him to know that the various parts of the night routine was part of a sleep routine, so he wouldn't fuss about it, and going to sleep wouldn't be a battle.

If it helps, DS is now 3.5. We have the SAME night routine- but with a few tweaks- he has milk in a cup while I read a story, then we go for a bath, keep everything in dim lighting. Back to the room for a snuggle, and then he is left to sleep. And I do not lift the blinds or entertain any chatter till 7 am. Maybe I was lucky, and it is his temperament, but he has never fussed about his actual bedtime/night routine. It's been a hard slog, but there was a thread here a while ago, about what you would do differently with sleep for baby no 2, and many many many posters felt that establishing a night routine (i.e teaching them that after these steps/cues it is time to sleep), was the most important.

Nottalotta we have a sensor monitor which made me feel better about putting them in a different room for an hour or so before we went to bed.
By 8 weeks we both really needed an hour to decompress in the evenings and to spend some time together. We would pop our heads in to check on them.
It's all about what you feel comfy with though. My girls wouldn't settle in the living room past 2 months in the evening so I had the choice of sitting in the dark from 7.30pm onwards each night and never, ever seeing hubby or leaving her for an hour. Personal choice.

We started developing a bedtime routine about 10 weeks. We started with just putting him in our room after his feed around 9 rather than bringing him back downstairs & took it from there, made it earlier every night, adding in bath every other night, story after feed etc. After a couple of weeks he was going to bed at 7 & sleeping through until he needed a feed. He moved into his own room soon after as he ran out of space in his crib. We have an angel care monitor with sensor pad & video camera. It's been brilliant & I found it very reassuring.

Wow all these early starters with routine. That's great it worked for you all but wouldn't have worked for me and Velcro Baby.
It was pretty fluid and based mainly on his previous nap until maybe 8 months?
By this I mean having a 7pm bedtime, not the actual routine of what we do.

We started as soon as we got home from hospital - and yes I know this is unpopular on Mumsnet but it worked for us - DS had bedtime at 7pm, bath and last feed before that. We never had problems with him self settling and he slept through (with one very quick night feed) from 7pm-7am. I can't tell if it was purely down to good luck or the fact we had a GF routine. .

Baby def shouldn't be in a bedroom alone now according to current guidelines

With mine we started around 6 weeks with then clean and changed and fed for around 9pm, then would settle them to sleep in living room with us. At 11pm we semi woke them, fed them, and took them to bed in our bedroom. They both slept 11pm-8pm by 10weeks

I think it depends on the baby personally. I didn't have any expectations with any of my 3 but the first few weeks I was so tired I would go upstairs to bed myself around 8.30 and just take them up with me. It just then naturally progressed to them going to bed every night around 7.30pm at around 12 weeks and I eventually started staying up a bit later. DS 2 was the exception - he would stay down with us in the living room until we went to bed (he would be asleep in his Moses basket or on one of us) for a lot longer as he was a bit clingy. I would go with the flow - if you have a monitor and your baby is happy I'm sure it will be fine for them to be asleep as long as you respond promptly to them when they wake. You might feel differently when they arrive though and enjoy having them near to you or snuggling into you on the sofa downstairs while you are watching television. And if you breast feed most babies are on a feeding frenzy that time of night for the first few weeks!

We didn't plan to start early, we hadn't really thought about it and it just seemed to be what we did - though with hindsight I'm glad we did.

I had very little support with DS other than DH and when he went back to work after a fortnight I found it tough and having a couple of hours in the early evening to feel like a human being - even just preparing and eating a meal - was potentially the difference between me coping or not.

We started properly around 3 months. Until that point we were living in a house renovation project - no central heating - so only had one or two warm rooms. I kept her with me/cluster feeding/asleep on me until I went to bed with her at 9. At that time when I changed her nappy I also changed her for bed. Some nights we gave her a bath with one of us, but not every night. I always did all night feeds in darkness without talking to her, right from the beginning.

At 3 months we moved into temporary accommodation - a one bedroom flat. We started a proper consistent bedtime routine with bath and stories, then put her in her cot at 7.30 and tried to keep her there. Didn't have a monitor, but our sofa was about 4m from the bed (through walls obviously). When we finally moved home she was almost 6 months old and bedtime has happened every night since.

It hasn't seemed to have any effect on her sleep. Sometimes she's great, mostly she's not!!

Oh, she's almost 10 months now and we put her to bed about 4 hours after she woke up from the last nap. It only varies over about 45 minutes, but there is no point putting her to bed before the 4 hour gap is up.

With dd2 we put her 'to bed' pretty much from day one. By putting her to bed I mean putting her in her Moses basket after a nappy change, clothes change and breastfeed at roughly the same time as dc1 was being put to bed. We come upstairs and lie in our bed watching tv with the sound turned down low so she wasn't left alone and still do this at 10 weeks. Obviously it wasn't as simple as it sounds every night as is the nature with newborns and she was/is always picked up and allowed to cluster feed or be cuddled if that's what she wants but 9 times out of 10 she is down for the night at roughly the same time as her big sister (mostly self settling too which is a bonus) and will usually have a long stretch of sleep before waking for a feed so she's definitely 'got it' in terms of night and day. Part of it is probably down to luck and temperament of baby but I also feel that we helped contribute by doing the above. With dd1 it took a little longer because we weren't as focused on routine what with it being our first we didn't have any other 'commitments' so to speak. When you have an older child it can make life so much easier to try and get the new baby to 'slot in' with things if that makes sense.

We were probably a week in when the HV learned we were "tag teaming" staying up all night with DD

She told us to put her up to bed and we never looked back, best advice we ever got

ohthegoats - I think we were incredibly lucky with our DS - he always went to bed at 7pm regardless on when he woke up from his nap - sometimes he'd only been awake a couple of hours but he still went to bed at 7pm. Once or twice he even slept right through from a 2pm nap to 7am the next day. .