Bedtime/nap routines

[Sbena]

Hi mums!

I am one of the many with a baby who has sleep issues. After 3 months of sleep training we are FINALLY at a place where I don't have to BF him before a nap (still have to sit by his cot for indefinite time and pat him, but that's for another time).

So baby is 9 1/2 months old, and I'm still struggling to have an adequate routine before bed. Google pretty much says "GIvE hIM a bAtH BEfOre bED", and let me tell you... no. For one thing, he doesn't need a bath every day, and for another thing giving him a bath in the evening just doesn't work for me. There's no time between dinner and bedtime, and dinner can't be moved earlier because we eat as soon as my husband gets home from work. It's difficult enough sometimes to even finish dinner in time for bed.

And if the bedtime routine is "bath", how can the naptime routine be a mini-version of this? I need new ideas!

So anyway...

Current bed routine is:
Nappy/jammies
Brush teeth
Read story
Milk feed
Get in sleeping bag with white noise (Ewan Shawn the Sheep)

He feeds for 20-30 minutes in the evening and then goes straight to bed (eyes are shut before his sleeping bag is zipped up). If I start too late, he will feed for about an hour before getting a second wind and then not going to sleep in his bed. So I'm trying REALLY hard to not let him fall asleep during supper. I do need to somehow swap the feed to the start or at least the middle of the routine, but until now he has absolutely not gone to sleep without a feed.

Current nap routine is:
Sit in dark room for a few minutes on my knee with Shawn playing. I bounce my legs gently in time with the heartbeat
Get in sleeping bag, give him a kiss and leave him

He starts crying before I've even turned away from the cot. Yes, it's a bit of separation anxiety, but he's done this since forever if I left him to take a nap. I've tried reading him a story before naps, but he just isn't big on reading. He usually wails at bedtime when he has his story; it's just not a relaxing thing to do for us. I've even given him a bath before his lunch nap on occasion, and these are the times that it's taken extra-long to get him to settle.

Hit me up with your routines!

For us our bedtime routine for our 9 month old is as follows:

Around 5.45/6.00pm we eat tea
Around 6.30/6.45pm we wash up with a warm soapy cloth (we feed him tea in just his nappy) and get into Pjs
6.45/7.00pm ish he has his last breastfeed (which i make sure he does not fall asleep during)
Anywhere between 7.00/7.45pm (depending on when he wakes from last nap and how long everything takes) we head through to the bedroom, white noise on, dummy in and we cuddle lying down in bed together until he falls asleep (usually takes less than 15 minutes). I stroke his hair whilst we cuddle too. We co-sleep so obviously this may not be achievable for everyone.
Once he's asleep i carefully roll out of the bed and leave him be.

Nap routine is:

Offer a drink of water around 10 mins before nap is due & check nappy
5 minutes before nap is due we head into the bedroom, turn on white noise machine, dummy in and lie down and cuddle & stroke his hair etc and he's usually asleep by the time his nap is due or not long after.

So for us the routine is pretty similar but a bit quicker than bedtime i suppose.

Have you tried giving DS his dinner earlier? Or you two eat and then your DH can eat later? If there's no time between dinner and bed then I'd look to shift that around.

We don't do bath every night, I don't think it's needed (apart from in the summer when my kids are filthy) - we're in the run round loads before bed camp rather than the nice relaxing time one! We don't have a nap routine as I liked both of mine to be able to nap anywhere - sometimes it's the cot (so cuddled to sleep at 9mo), other times it's in the buggy. Appreciate I'm lucky to have willing children in this regard though!

sd

Wow, you're lucky! baby does sleep in the stroller/car, but he needs to sleep better at home in bed.

Baby does have his dinner at 5 - husband and I eat later on when he gets home - and then bedtime starts at "half 6" (or later). It's the winding down part that I'm struggling with.

My 13 month old has never had a routine per say.

Whenever he looks a bit tired I offer the breast. Either he decides he’s not hungry and goes back to playing, or he falls asleep at the end of the feed, or he get a second wind at the end of the feed and goes back to playing.

When I’m at work dh instead rocks and cuddles him to sleep whenever he looks tired. Occasionally that doesn’t work and he has to take him for a drive or push him in the buggy.

On average he goes to bed around 10pm and wakes up around 8am. Daytime naps are totally unpredictable.

He’s never slept through but if he wakes at night it’s just a quick feed and maybe a nappy change and both of us are back to sleep within minutes. I’ve always felt that I’m getting enough sleep despite the night feeds.

When he was a newborn he slept in his own cot but as he got older we had to lower the cot and once we had lowered the cot it became very difficult to put him down without waking him up. So we ended up co-sleeping.

I try to minimise exposure to artificial light in the evenings and expose him to bright light in the mornings, otherwise his bedtime will just drift later and later.

He gets a bath every other day at whatever time is most convenient for us.