When did you start your baby on a routine

[AdrianeMole]

What age did you manage to start a sleep routine?

Thanks all for all the responses, there's a huge variety so it seems there are many ways to do it. We are breastfeeding and it was a little slow at first so i think a strict routine then wouldn't have worked. I would like to start a bedtime and nap times soonish but suspect that feeding might stay on demand.

@AdrianeMole I always fed on demand too. And BF both babies a long time. But definitely start with a bedtime routine and hopefully then nap routine can follow. Once you start weaning it’s easier too.

How do you manage an early bedtime say 7pm with the fact that you and partner don't want to go to bed then but are supposed to be in the same room?

Well that’s exactly why I didn’t bother. Baby went to bed when I went to bed, they happily slept on me/DH downstairs all evening as we used to feed a lot at that time (EBF).

They were in their own bedrooms.......

Didn’t do the early bedtime which made it a lot less of a problem. We were often out of an afternoon/evening. Didn’t want an early waker (our night owl tendencies appear to be genetic - my dad wrote his best musical pieces in the early hours of the morning). Natural rhythm was midnight till noon which suited us fine.

Focus was on the right amount of good sleep, not the timing of it. And interaction with DD.

She’s an extremely bright and well adjusted 12 year old now so it did no harm.

In the early weeks they love clusterfeeding in the evening so there’s no such thing as bedtime, let alone an early one. Later on they’ll doze in the Moses basket while you watch TV if you’re lucky, or on you if you like the cuddles/they feed frequently. They “wake up” around 6-8 weeks and while some babies can cope with being downstairs with the lights low and TV on, neither of mine could – they needed pitch black and white noise and quiet from six weeks with DC one, 10 weeks with DC two - he was sleepier all round. But it wasn’t from 7pm – as they sorted out day/night the clusterfeeding window got earlier so they were done and asleep for their big sleep from midnight, then 10pm, then 9pm, then 8pm from about three months when the cluster feeds stopped. Tbh I found pregnancy so exhausting and breastfeeding so exhausting and night feeds so exhausting I was happy to go and have an early night once they started hating TV/light/noise. I’d read on my kindle, feed on demand, wait for them to conk out. There were a few weeks where it felt like baby prison – bedtime finally shifted earlier, they couldn’t cope downstairs, but too young to sleep alone. DP would do a shift; I’d do a shift. We were probably over egging the pudding and they’d have been fine for a couple of hours. But it was a short window of life in retrospect and he was in his own room at six months, in bed at 6.30pm.

It was a guideline I felt comfortable enough not following. I just made sure to follow baby on back, empty cot, own sleeping space etc which are the biggest SIDS protective factors.

Soon as we got home from hospital. Daughter did the same with her boys. They love bed. Such good sleepers

I used a video baby monitor with white noise function to mask the sound of me going to bed

We never really did a day time sleep routine but did for night from very early on. Not on purpose, we just fell into a routine which changed over time.

From newborn, baby would stay up with DH until around 11.30pm when they would both then come up to bed. I'd usually been in bed from around 9pm.

This time gradually crept earlier until we got to 9.30/10pm bedtime for all of us at around 9 weeks at which point she started sleeping through until 6.30am.

At 6 months bedtime ended up around 9pm and at 7 months around 8.30pm. Soon after this we just took the plunge and started a 7pm bedtime. She then moved into her own room at 9 months.