How to create a sleep routine at 8 weeks?

[Fortunesrocks]

My son has just turned 8 weeks and I'm wondering how I push his bedtime to an earlier time.

He goes to sleep around 11-11.30pm each night and will sleep for 5.5 hours, have a feed and quickly settle back down for another 3-4 hours. He will usually then wake for another feed around 9am ish, and either be up for the day or will go back for another hour or two. I just wish I could get him to go to bed earlier.

I'm wondering how I go about getting him to go down earlier at night. Sometimes I'm exhausted and would love to go to bed before 11pm. He suffers with colic, and his awake time is from 9pm to around 10pm, he sometimes will fuss and cry (I think this might be the witching hour) and no matter what I do he's awake at that period. How do I establish a routine? Do I bath, feed and then settle him into his crib earlier even if he'll be awake for that period?

First time mum and just need some advice. What worked for you? I would love to be able to get into bed at 9pm.

I wish my one year old slept that long.
What's the problem with his current routine?

@doadeer

Haha, yes we do spend the evening on the sofa inbetween feeds, it's not the same but I'll take what I can get.

@BertieBotts

It is, especially if he does a lot of lates in a row. I'm on my own a lot. He sleeps after work when he gets in, but even if he's been at work all day he stills gets up in the night with the baby too.

@Bluelightdistrict

He won't go down until 11-11.30pm, and after being on my own all day I'd love to be able to have some down time before I have to go to bed. That's why I was curious if anyone had any suggestions as to how I get him into a routine or bring his bedtime down a few hours.

Have you read about the fourth trimester? I really wouldn't even think about routines yet.

I stumbled across the following site when I was trying to address a similar issues;

www.babysleepscience.com/single-post/2017/07/18/Newborns-and-Sleep-Part-2-Weeks-7-16

This site explains that a late bedtime is very normal at this age and also that the evening fussiness is a great sign as it shows that your baby's circadian rhythm is starting to align to night and day. The good news is that your baby's bedtime should naturally start to move earlier over the next few weeks. The above link gives some advice as to how you can encourage this to happen (but I found it just happened naturally anyway between 12-16 weeks). Good luck!

It is totally normal for a child that age not to sleep through! We were probably at the worst end of the scale but DS didn't do 5 hour stretches until well over a year, first slepr through at 2.5 and slept through more often than not at 4.5. At worst (about 9 months when I went back to work) he was waking every 45 minutes.

@UnaOfStormhold can i ask when your bad 9 month phase wore off? I'm deep in that horrific stage now.

Sorry to derail!

@Fortunesrocks unfortunately, that's not what babies are for.
When you have a baby this is what happens. I would count your lucky stars, that's a very good routine.

@doadeer huge sympathy! There was a definite change for the better about 11 months - still lots of waking but not quite so relentless. It really helped when we got him to take a bottle of expressed milk from his dad, letting us split the night into shifts in different rooms so we each got some consistent rest.

Oh thank you. He currently has a rotten cold and I was away without DH so I had 2.5 hours sleep last night and 3 the previous two! It's horrific. He is having a bottle of formula as if I breastfed he just wanted to continue for hours 🙄. I hope we start to see a shift soon. It's hard keeping the optimism!