How to manage bedtime with 2 under 3?

[Drowninginwashing]

Hi everyone, I'm looking for advice. My DS will be just under 2 and a half when DC2 comes along at the end of Feb. Although he normally sleeps through (or wakes once), bedtime is a struggle and can take up to two hours. He sleeps in his own room (whereas baby will be in my room with me).

I manage with this at the moment but I am wondering how on earth I will manage this with a baby in my arms. I intend to ebf - I did the same with DS until he was 2 so only stopped recently. I don't imagine I can/should leave the baby in a different room during my toddler's bedtime, so what do I do with the baby?

My DH works long hours and so it isn't usually an option for him to do bedtime for my toddler.

Any and all suggestions welcome! I accept that my toddler's bedtime routine is what it is, and am looking more for practical advice on how to manage with both kids in the same room with me, rather than advice on shortening bedtime/making my toddler more independent.

I will be having a planned section (emergency one last time) but DH is planning to take 5 weeks off so I'll be more mobile by the time bedtime will become an issue.

Thanks in advance!

I'm so touched by all the helpful responses, thank you! Can't reply to all individually but I'm getting lots of good ideas from you all.

@GarlicMushroom what a kind thing to say, thank you!

@crazychemist so he has a bath every other night, and after that (every night regardless of whether he has bathed) we read 3 stories in bed, have a cuddle and then I turn off the light and sit by the bed. I recently (since Christmas) introduced an audio book at this point because I was hoping that might help me to leave him alone before he sleeps. Currently it can take anything from half an hour to an hour and a half for him to fall asleep once the lights are out. It means he is rarely asleep before 9pm, sometimes later, so it's far from ideal. I guess he may still be adjusting from feeding to sleep, which is all he knew until he was 2.

I used to put older DC to bed first. It meant I got some special time with the baby, but also toddler got some attention at bed time. In the morning baby woke up first, but then went back to sleep so I could get toddler ready and have 1;1 time then. Eventually they started to going to bed together at the same time.

@Drowninginwashing oh, that’s different from my DD. We went straight from feeding to sleep to doing it independently. The way we did it (without any tears) was to read stories about children getting older and not having mummy milk at bed time. They acted as a starting point for talking about it - we read them a few times, then talked about them a bit and how DD. Was getting older and all the fun things she could do that she couldn’t have done as a baby. I used to sing a song to her as I fed her to sleep, then did singing the song with rocking but no feeding, then singing the song when she was just in bed. We still sing it once as part of the routine.

Would “fading” work? E.g. each week you move your chair further away until you are sitting outside the door? An hour and a half to fall asleep sounds like he might just not be tired enough - my DD takes ages to go sleep if she hasn’t had enough fresh air (which happened quite a bit when I was pregnant)