Baby bedtime/routines help/experience?

[MotherOfBeagles]

Ok I know it's really early at 9 weeks but please could you let me know what you did with regards to bed time/evenings with a baby and how and when you introduced a routine? I know all the advice says 3 months start a sleep routine, if not earlier but when it comes to the put them down to bed bit is that bed in a Moses basket in the living room with you until you go to bed or in their crib in the bedroom alone?

Eg tonight we did play, bath, book, bottle and bed in crib in bedroom. He stayed asleep in the crib for about 20 months. An hour after that and we've given up and are rocking him to sleep downstairs with us as usual.

Any advice? Other people's experiences that you're willing to share is what I really want to hear. Thank you!

DD1 we just kept downstairs with us and all went to bed about 9.30 at which point the endless screaming would commence. If we were lucky we would be asleep by midnight.

DD2 we were going upstairs at 7pm with the toddler anyway so we all went upstairs, did bath etc and then just sat in our bedroom with the ipad / watching TV quietly. She is a better sleeper than dd1 but I suspect that's coincidence. Also meant she was left to scream around 5pm because I had to get tea ready for us all to eat by 6pm at the latest.

Thanks trilby! Nice to hear other people's experience. That seems to be our problem atm. He seems to pass out properly by 8 but then we wake him up when we go to bed at like 10 ish and then we cannot get him back down until at least 1am if we're lucky. I don't know if this is now his norm or if maybe we could do something different.

We have by no means cracked the sleeping game but we have our DD sleep downstairs in the evening (though we are trying to get her to go to sleep upstairs she doesn't sleep for as long up there for whatever reason- maybe lack of noise). We also found that if we wanted her to go to sleep at 11 she needed to be up at between 9-10 So that she was sufficiently tired enough to go back to sleep by 11. If your baby is waking at 10 and it's not for a sleepy feed then they might be too awake to go straight back to sleep which is what you want when you are going to bed. I decided I would rather have her up for a bit in the evening than have to go to bed past midnight. Might not work for you at all but just a suggestion!

We bathed, bottle 8-8.30 and let baby fall asleep on me then all head to bed around 9-9.30, all was going great, baby slept through till 8.30.

Now at 14 weeks ours is so restless the whole night 😴, hopefully just a phase!

Do you use dummie, swaddle?

Thanks sw sounds like you're in a similar thing to us. I have no problem with it at the minute as I'm coping but I just wondered if I'm ballsing it up and going to end up making him nocturnal if I keep going.

Have to say though I don't like leaving him upstairs. I want to enjoy the cuddles for as long as I can!

bringme he hates to be swaddled but does have a dummy. I have to be honest he does sleep well when he eventually goes down properly when we're in bed. I just really wanted to know what other people did and how it worked out. As he has started staying awake later and later now and worried going to make him nocturnal. Also would be nice to be able to go to bed and not have to spend an hour soothing him but I am coping it's not unmanageable - yet

Have you tried bigger feed for bed time? We give extra ounce?

My LO is 6 months now. We started off with a routine pretty much from the word go, but that was mainly for my husband and I. She was feeding every 1.5-2 hours so it's not like she slept through the night. However, we would head up to bed around 9 and she fell asleep on us before we transferred her to the next to me cot. We then slowly started to introduce bath, feed (sometimes book if she wasn't tired enough), swaddle, sleep.

This is still pretty much our routine, aside from the swaddle which she is too old for now. It's replaced with sleeping bag, which she knows is cue for bedtime. She sleeps through the night now and I strongly believe the routine we set (albeit initially for ourselves), has a lot to do with that.

I was always keen to separate play, nap and bedtimes so there was no confusion for her. She doesn't fight bedtime and generally it's a doddle. Not right now though - we are currently in teething hell! But we are sticking to the routine - it just takes longer and sometimes a rock to get her to settle.

My DD is an amazing sleeper but only when we co-sleep (which we do about half the time).

On these nights it's DP changes nappy, into PJs & sleeping bag, cuddles and chat for ten mins, then between 8.45-9.30pm depending on tiredness, I get into our bed with her and BF her lying down. Asleep in about 15 mins. Usually wakes up and has a little whinge an hour later, BF again for 10 mins then she's down for the night. Wakes up for one dreamfeed and sleeps through til 9am.

We're trying to transition her into her cot though but she wakes up every hour crying and it's hard going. Co-sleeping just works for us. Doesn't for everyone but she's so much happier doing it.
She's 4.5 months.

We introduced bedtime (ie baby went upstairs in her crib at around 2/3 months). Before that she stayed down with us and if she was awake she was awake and if she was asleep we were LOVING life again (all for those 20 minutes!).

It took us a long old while for our DD to drift off on her own without crying, sometimes I'd stay with her and hold her hand and she'd eventually go. We did a dream feed (and still do!) which helped get us a bigger stint of sleep before the middle of the night feed.

Now at 9 months she will still whinge a bit, it's odd as she isn't clingy at all and a really happy thing in the day but come to sleep time and it's not all that fun, it doesn't take long for her to go off and I actually give her a back rub and we use Ewan the Sheep!