3 month old bedtime routine. How and what time?

[DisneyGirl2387]

I'm a first time Mum with a 3 month old DS. I have an amazing husband but we are both totally clueless on how to look after our little one. We are trying our best but are iterally winging it! I came home from hospital on the day the 2nd national lockdown was announced so we are pretty much on our own. We have no other Mummy and Daddy friends.

So my DS is bottle fed (long story). I feed him 6oz. This is normally every 3 to 4 hours. Sometimes 5 hours if he is asleep and sometimes 2 and a half hours if he is crying and I've ran through the usual list. Sometimes he sleeps for long stretches at night and other times he wakes frequently. There is no pattern!

Because of this it is very hard to judge when his last bottle of the day will be and when to 'put him to bed'. When it is his last bottle of the night we all to to bed together. We feed him with the lights dimmed, take him up to our room for stories, put him in his sleeping swaddle(we put our pjs on too) and then rock him to sleep in his next to me crib. We then go to bed. Sometimes this is at 8pm at night other times 11pm and anywhere in-between.When he wakes up after a nap in the early evening me and my DH always have the conversation about is this his bedtime bottle or do we stay up until his next feed and then put him to bed. When he is downstairs with us he sleeps in his moses basket.

Anyway the only other Mum I know of a 3 month old is the lovely lady in the bed opposite me who was induced at the same time. We have kept in touch. She said her DS feeds every 4 hours. Has a bath, last bottle and is in bed at 7.30pm.

So now I'm worried that we should be having more of a 'set bedtime. But how do I do this when his feeds are not the same everyday? I would love to start say a set routine at 7pm but he could have just had a bottle or be due one in 2 ish hours etc.

Will he find his own routine? Do I need to try and force one? I'm not so much bothered about the time me and DH go to bed it is more I want DS to be having a good night sleep rather than going to bed at different times each night. Am I worrying for nothing?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated x

[Clover22]

I am also a FTM and completely winging it too! Baby sleeps whenever he wants during the day and his feeds are never at the same time! However we do have a bit of a routine for bed time! We started it at 6 weeks where we would do bath, bottle with a story and then bed starting at 8:30. We did this no matter what time baby had his previous bottle so sometimes he would have a bottle at 7 and then again at 9. The last week or so, the bed time routine has started a later...we have really been into MAFS! But we are still sticking with the routine so now baby is having his bed time bottle around 10ish and then falling straight to sleep and sleeping until 6ish.
I don't think the time really matters, I think its the routine of doing the same thing each night. However, I am now set that if I don't do something, he won't sleep as well! So swings and roundabouts!!

[Havana7]

I started a routine at 3 months of bath bottle bed, sometimes still awake sometimes not. My DDs feeds were not at the same time each day either but regardless I always offered one after her bath, she soon fell in to a routine where an extra bottle wasn’t needed. Don’t know if this was right/wrong and every baby is different so just did what felt right for us

[Tucancrossing]

This is my routine with my 4 month old which has been in place since he was about 6 weeks:

5pm - bottle of expressed milk
6pm - bathtime (only every 3 days)
6.30pm - chill out time, turn lights down low in living room, play classical music, sometimes use star projector
6.45pm - story
6.50pm - get ready for bed including baby massage, playing Spotify lullabies playlist
7pm - in bed breastfeeding to sleep, he falls asleep anywhere between 7.15 and 7.45 and then he's down for at least 5-6 hours until his first night feed

He's always been an amazing sleeper and I swear by our routine. It's so important to me to be able to have an evening with my husband as well 💕