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

[BotBotticelli]

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!).

I've always gone by when their longest stretch of sleep was. At around 2 they started sleeping through from about 8.

I'm reading this with interest because I think we're going to have to forcibly introduce this to DD2. Our first daughter would drift off herself about 8 and we'd keep her in the carrycot in the living room til we went to bed. With DD2 (nearly 6mo) she would happily stay wide awake until her last feed at half ten/eleven and then come through with us. But DP is going to be away a lot for work so I'd like to get a better routine going in the evenings. DD2 is still in the same room as us just now so will plan to put our toddler down in the evening then just put the baby down and get her relaxed then leave her in the room. And have to do the whole 'go in, come out' thing for a while...

It was probably about 3 or 4months but might have been later as it was a long time before she went down before half ten through cluster feeding etc. It came down gradually. I loved having an hour or two to myself!! She was in our room until about nine or ten months though.

From about 4 weeks when he wpuld go to sleep at 7 and do his longest stretch. He's 8 weeks now and is asleep by 7 because this routine fits in with our older Dd. He had bath with her, milk with her then he goes into his cot 10 minutes before her so I can read her stories. Their rooms are downstairs though and doors open

For those of you who have under 6mo babies getting put down, are they already asleep or are they self soothing?

Oldest I would feed to sleep while lying in bed and then move away, younger were fed downstairs then put into the cot drowsy.

Same here, I would feed to sleep in my bed and then move away and come down and have an evening with DH.

DS2 is now 12 weeks and we've been putting him upstairs in his crib from about 4wks. I know about the guidelines, but he has white noise on in the background, so it's not total silence, and he was sleeping for 3-4 hours from 7pm at that point. He didn't settle well in carrycot downstairs with us, and slept better away from lights and conversation noise, so it seemed better to ensure he got the sleep he needed than slavishly follow the guidelines.

Useful question, thanks OP. My DS is only 7 weeks but rarely naps after 3 meaning he's bone tired by 10. He sleeps well after then though (side lying feed then into Moses basket) but I worry if we did this earlier he would miss out on the feeding he does (fussily) in those 3 hours.

As an experiment I've come up to bed now (9pm) and will see what that does to his overnight sleep. If it's ok I might try gradually bringing it forward.

I've been taking dd2 upstairs same time as dd1, and we sit on the bed together chatting once they're both asleep. She is way better at bedtime than dd1 ever was, I am wondering if we messed up keeping dd1 downstairs for hours.

DS will now only sleep in a quiet room with no lights. We put him to bed from about 7 weeks when he started to get disturbed by us in the evenings.

Around 5 weeks, I remember because we moved house when he was 7 weeks and he was already in that routine then. Can't remember why, think we were fed up of holding him while he slept rather than having alone time.

He went to sleep in his Moses beautifully. Wish he'd do that now!! 4 months old and despises his cot, have been co sleeping for be past 6 weeks or so.

We did it when he started solidly sleeping 8-12.
But that wasn't till nearly 5mo.

I couldn't be arsed with being up and down all the time when he wasn't sleeping that chunk - pissing about up and down the stairs all evening is not really "getting an evening back"

Around 10 weeks. I started taking dd up at 9pm and reading a book, feeding her and putting her into her basket. Took hours to begin with but it was more about getting her into the idea of a bedtime routine. Slowly brought the time forward with the idea of creating a proper bedtime. We had a monitor on and she was still in the same room as us until about 20 weeks when I was pretty much having to cram her into the moses basket.

I went to bed when my baby did and watched tv quietly in bed. He's 6mo old now and lately been going to bed between 6-7 too early for me to get in bed as I still have things to do but generally I'm upstairs by about 9pm

12 weeks with DD1 and 15 weeks with DD2. I think we just kept trying once the cluster feeding in the evenings started to lessen.

We move up to the bedroom and watch TV / eat dinner there while she sleeps in crib. Have done this from day 1 and will likely do until 6 months

Hahahahahaha...(wry laughter....)

Only because I've done the parenting walk of shame for the last three nights (putting 24 week old to bed at 7pm and having to go up and get him to feed to sleep in front of the TV after 5 trips upstairs...)

We started to put him to bed properly at about 10 weeks I think, he just was too overtired to be downstairs. However he's perfectly happy to feed in front of the TV and sleep in a swingy chair for now and just wakes constantly if put up to bed so we're going with the flow for my sanity...

8 weeks.

He wasn't a cluster feeder; was grumpy downstairs with us in the evenings and was already growing out of his moses basket so we thought we'd try for evening bedtime routine and own cot in own room in one fell swoop.

There were a few weeks of going up and down the stairs to re-settle him but I think all in all it was the right time for DS. Second baby on the way now and have no preconceptions it will be the same - I think it is very much based on that child (and to a certain extent your parenting style). e.g. staying up all evening and co sleeping until age 4 would be my absolute nightmare but works fine for others. Ditto bedtime routine from day 1.

As a footnote, I'm highly skeptical of the current SIDS/ 6 months in same room advice. I wouldn't be surprised if it is entirely changed in 15 years time, as all scientific advice about child rearing seems to be.

10 weeks she was in another room in a one bed flat (so next door, with the door mostly open - we didn't have a monitor). At 5 months we moved back to our house after renovations, and she started sleeping upstairs in her own room during the evenings with a monitor.

If we'd been in our house the whole time, I really doubt she'd have done any sleeping at all apart from on us until 6 months - unless we'd put her upstairs. She's always been a crappy sleeper!

We were having to go and see to her at some point in the evening until she was about 8 months old.

11 weeks. DS was beginning to get to big for his Moses basket and was sleeping through so off he went. 22 weeks now and happy as Larry.