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Parenting

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Original poster

What age did you start putting your baby upstairs to bed in the early evening?

48 replies

BotBotticelli · 13/09/2015 22:28

And how did you know they were ready for it??

(I mean as opposed to spending the evening downstairs with you and DH until your bedtime)?

Ds2 is 5 weeks old, and I am sure we started putting his brother to bed in a dark bedroom around 8pm ish (after whatever time he had a bottle) from around 7 weeks old. But cannot for the life of me remember what made us do this!! What signs should we look for?

At the moment ds2 is still most wakeful (and bloody grumpy) between the hours of 7-10pm so cannot see it happening at the moment!

Just longing to get some sort of evening back!

(Oh and no need to remind me of the official "guidelines" on keeping your baby in the same room as you at all times until they're 6 months old....I am well aware this is the official advice but we did put ds1 into a bedtime routine quite early as I mentioned above and we are quite keen to do the same again with this baby!).

OP posts:

Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

NickyEds · 14/09/2015 10:52

We knew ds was ready for it after he'd been settling in his moses basket from around 7.30 ish downstairs with us and we were disturbing him. We were having to have the tv on very quietly and not make too much noise as he was sleeping in the living room. We still kept him down with us until 6 months as per the guidelines. Dd is now 8 weeks and is miles away I think- she still cluster feeds all evening so comes to bed with us. If she sleeps ok downstairs we'll wait until 6 months.
If you're not bothered about the SIDS guidelines I'd take him up when he's reliably settling in a moses downstairs from 7-8 ish until you go to bed- your evening won't be yours if you keep having to go upstairs to resettle him.

Mrscog · 14/09/2015 11:32

With DS1 we did around 13 weeks. DS2 is 21 weeks and I still haven't yet as I think I'll miss him, and he doesn't really settle until 9pm (last baby so stretching it out :( )

I think however when he settles at 9pm I'm going to start putting him upstairs soon so it doesn't become too hard a habit to break.

Snossidge · 14/09/2015 11:34

Once they were actually sleeping in the evening and not cluster feeding - varied between 8 weeks and 4 months. Though the younger one were going in to a room with a sibling so not sleeping alone.

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ChocolateWombat · 14/09/2015 11:38

We did it from the first day home from hospital.
Had a feed in the dimly lit bedroom and then into bed.

Of course in the early days we had to go in and were certainly feeding again a couple of hours later, but tbh we never really had on-going cluster feeding as such.

After about a week, the bedtime routine included a bath and bed at about 7. After that, we always ate our evening meal.

If you want to keep your baby downstairs with you until you go to bed, of course you can.....but you don't have to do that.

FreeButtonBee · 14/09/2015 11:47

I think I could have done at around 12 weeks for my EBF twins but they had to put up a fight to get my milk up to appropriate levels so had massive amounts of cluster feeding til then. hoping DS2 will settle down a bit quicker. I'll probably keep him downstairs in the carrycot til our bedtime for a good while longer as j CBA to buy another baby monitor and DTs can't get out of their bedroom at night so they still have the monitor at the moment. But we have plenty of space so can put him in a quiet corner and still watch TV/have friends or family over.

ThatsNotEvenAWord · 14/09/2015 11:51

7 months

ThatsNotEvenAWord · 14/09/2015 11:52

Sorry only answered half the question. Tried before that but he wouldn't settle so ended up bringing him back down. Just kept trying until he did and 7mo was when it worked.

luckiestgirlintheworld · 14/09/2015 11:52

About 7 weeks for DS1. He was really grouchy in the evenings so we realised he was tired and wanted to sleep properly. Once we put him to sleep upstairs in our dark quiet room, (about 7pm) he would go into his longer night time sleep. It was great!
DS2 is now 5 weeks and I'm still trying to work out his patterns so I think it's a bit early for him yet.

holmessweetholmes · 14/09/2015 11:57

From day 1. Why do they need to stay downstairs?

Snossidge · 14/09/2015 11:59

holmes - putting babies to sleep alone increases the risk of cot death, and mine dozed and fed on and off for the first few weeks anyway so no point in putting them to bed.

Tfoot75 · 14/09/2015 12:09

About 3 months or so - when cluster feeding / evening crying stopped and it became obvious that tv and lights on was disrupting sleep. DD didn't have colic but had bouts of unexplained crying in the evenings so it wouldn't have been possible or practical to leave her alone before this point. Intended to follow sids guidance until sleep became disrupted.

Mrscog · 14/09/2015 13:42

Holmes for us it was due to cluster feeding and also just enjoying the sleepy cuddles in between :)

BertieBotts · 14/09/2015 13:47

When he could crawl and started wanting attention rather than just being happy to snooze and/or lie on somebody's lap, so around 8 months for DS.

NerrSnerr · 14/09/2015 13:50

We followed the Sids guidelines and waited until she was 6 months. She just dozed in our arms or the carry cot before we went to bed.

FATEdestiny · 14/09/2015 13:54

When the "nap" that happened from around 7-8pm became part of main, bedtime sleep rather than being a nap akin to a daytime nap. For my youngest, this was about 5 months old.

BertieBotts · 14/09/2015 14:03

YY Mrscog me too :)

Writerwannabe83 · 14/09/2015 14:17

9 months.

Original poster

BotBotticelli · 14/09/2015 18:31

Ah thanks all that's been really useful and has jogged my memory! This is exactly what ds1 did: at some point around 7-8 weeks old he started seeming to want to sleep in a deep sleep after his bottle around 7-8pm and so we tried puttin him in a dark bedroom rather than downstairs with us. Downstairs he would just get woken up and get grumpy.

I will keep an eye out for similar signs with ds2...at the moment he is still spending most of the evening doing unexplained/colicky crying so there's no way we could put him to bed just yet.

Hopefully the colicky crying will end soon and we can get a bit of evening back.

OP posts:

Mrscog · 14/09/2015 18:36

I'm sure you have tried this, but in case you haven't - have you tried a nice noisy hit of white noise to calm the colicky crying? Worked a treat for us with both DSes

LovelyWeatherForDucks · 14/09/2015 19:26

DS is 9 weeks and has mostly started settling for a long sleep anytime between 7pm and 9pm, so once 3yo DS is asleep (7.30ish) we turn lights down in our room, white noise, swaddle and feed/cuddle til asleep. Then grab quick dinner and come to bed myself!

nutmegandginger · 14/09/2015 23:48

Yes, also when she shifted to going to deep nighttime sleep at 7/8pm rather than later. It moved back gradually with us - for the first 6 weeks or so it was about midnight, then it shifted to about 9pm and gradually got a bit earlier. It wasn't a 'proper' baby bedtime of early evening until well over 6 months though. Before that if we tried it she would just wake up full of beans an hour later or wake up at 3am thinking it was morning.

WinterForest · 15/09/2015 02:48

For me with my son I kind of put him to bed whenever he liked for the first 3-4 months. I'd get up whenever he did all night long lol, to feed him. By the time he reached about 6 months I put him to bed at 8pm. So even now at 10 months old he falls asleep at 8pm. He will sleep all night. If I'm still awake I offer him a bottle before I sleep myself. This has worked like a charm so far. To be honest I started putting him to bed right when he stopped crying all night long. One day he just sort of fell asleep at night, and even though I kept checking on him all night he was out like a light, so after that I put him to bed strictly at 8pm with no fuss about it from him at all. :P Some parent's force their babies to bed at a certain time (in cases where there is no way to tell) while other babies just kind of do it themselves.

WinterForest · 15/09/2015 02:50

Also my son WILL NOT fall asleep if there is a light on. He doesn't like anything happening what-so-ever (even if we whisper) he does like the radio on a low setting though. Generally he doesn't like any light or sound at all though and will let us know. He gets grouchy when he's tried and rubs his eyes a lot. That means we must vacate his bedroom lol. Then he passes right out, no crying or anything. He likes his sleep :)

neversleepagain · 15/09/2015 21:12

From 3 weeks.

imwithspud · 15/09/2015 21:23

We used to just stay upstairs and watch TV/Read in bed rather than have DD2 downstairs with us, we started leaving her up there and staying downstairs until we wanted to go to bed when she was around 12-ish weeks old maybe? We use a monitor of course and go up to her should she wake for a feed or what ever. She's 16weeks old now and generally ready for bed at around 7pm. It's nice to not have to worry so much about talking or having the tv on too loud in the evenings.

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