Bedtime for parents when baby sleeps

[Nicolahollie]

This might sound stupid but I was wondering what other parents do at night when they put their baby down to sleep?

i try to get my 7 week to go bed at around 10pm, we have a Moses basket upstairs (for nighttime) and downstairs (for during the day). During the week isn’t such an issue as my partner goes to sleep early so we can all go to sleep at the same (ish) time but at the weekend we like to stay up a little bit later.

But if we put DD in her basket downstairs so we can stay up and watch a film for eg, she isn’t going to sleep due to the bright lights and sound. But then that means we would need to be going to bed at the same time as DD which is a bit early for us at the weekend.

what do other people do at weekends night times? Should we just be going to bed at 10pm at weekends too?

(I hope all that makes sense 🫤)

Think I commented on your other post

we had exact same problem. Baby is 7 months now. Partner works at 3am during week so we all go to bed early and I don’t mind to get sleep for the early mornings and waking up during the night. Weekends same but I guess it’s a routine for us all now. We will be putting baby in their own room this week with a new schedule so the plan is put baby in the room and go downstairs but they are older. My partner was anxious and stuck to the rules of baby in same room as us at all times. Like you it woke baby up etc. didn’t know what others do either as to me it meant baby was getting good sleep

My son didn't have a sleep routine until he started napping and sleeping through around 12 weeks. Up until then he slept in his Moses basket wherever we were and we normally went to bed after his last feed at 11pm.

On MN a lot of people actually go to bed at like 7pm

i put my babies in their cots in my bedroom until I went to bed. At 7 weeks they were probably downstairs with us for a while then in the cot about 9 then I’d come to bed about 10-10.30 for a dreamfeed and night

I have a 6 week old with no2 and we just turned her Moses basket away from the tv. This always works, unless she's up for a feed. This was the same with our DD. Although she wouldn't sleep anywhere but our arms for months😂 so we would be sitting up on a Friday night watching stranger things whilst she slept in my arms haha!

Thanks for your replies so far 😀😀 that makes sense I suppose. I guess when she’s older she will have an earlier bedtime and hopefully sleeping through. Maybe I could extend her “last feed” to bit later but she’s still waking in the night for feeds so technically not her last feed 😜

@ShirleyPhallus did your babies sleep well while downstairs with you? I can’t get mine little one to sleep in her basket at all during the day but does when it’s bedtime so when it is time to go down it’s lights out. I’m not sure she would sleep if we stayed up a while after

@justanothermanicmonday1 oh that sounds just like us, literally won’t sleep anywhere but on me but strangely does sleep well when I put her down at night - thank goodness!!! This is reassuring 😀
I might try turning her basket away or maybe in a darker part of the room. Do you wake her up when you’re ready for bed or do you wait until she wakes for a feed and then take her upstairs with you?

Can't you just put the moses basket in an adjacent room / area to the lounge so they are near but not directly affected by the flashing light?

I put mine upstairs from about 3 months. The whole point of being in the same room as them is that they can hear your heartbeat and breathing to regulate theirs …but I realised she wasn’t doing that in the corner in a Moses basket over the sound of Grey’s Anatomy 😃. She slept much better and I went to check on her more often.

We usually just carry the Moses basket through to the room with her in it if she's asleep. We don't wait until she wakes. If she's awake when we're going to bed we will sit up do the change & feed and settle and go to bed after that.

These are the times it's so difficult because there isn't any routine. So don't beat yourself up about it. We started to get DD into a routine at 12 weeks. So bath bottle & bed at 7:30 every night. And we would just go into the room during the week, stick headphones on and watch Netflix etc.

On a weekend if we fancied a glass of wine (or two) we would have her in the livingroom with us and head to bed about 9/10. It takes months of hard graft to get the routine. So try not to worry x

And during the day I do put her in a darker part of the living area. X

We had a Moses basket that had a good type thing so we'd face them away from the tele with that up and they slept relatively well downstairs with all the noise going on. They say it's better to get them used to sleeping in situations with noise and commotion.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz I haven’t tried that to be honest but will definitely try it. Thank you

My 10 week old (7 weeks adjusted) DS has a mini bedtime routine and goes down in his next 2 me cot at 7pm in our bedroom. I lie next to him doing bits on my phone for 30 mins then go downstairs and watch him on a monitor until we go up. We do physically pop in too. He wakes for a bottle around 11pm/midnight but we’re always in bed well before then. He also has two morning naps in there (he’s soooooo nosy we had to put up blackout blinds and pop his white noise on and gives in and goes to sleep)

He slept terribly downstairs with lights, TV, our noise and the dog barking to go outside he sleeps so much better in his cot. Afternoon naps he is usually in his sling for one while I walk dogs and on DH for a last 30 min nap of the day. I’ve been using Huckleberry app to loosely follow nap structure and I really like it.

i understand it’s not what everybody would do and I think it’s very individual but it just works for us. My house is very old and oddly configured in a big L shape so when he was napping downstairs I was catching up on jobs and had to keep popping in to check anyway and having to worry about noise waking him, dogs barking at deliveries etc so I just decided he would be better off being left in peace upstairs…

@sezzer87 that sounds like a good idea so will try that and see if it works. Thank you!

keep them with you with one lamp on (who watches TV with bright light!!). Good to get used to sleeping with noise

@justanothermanicmonday1 oh you’ve made me feel so much better saying that. You can read so many different things that it’s hard to know what to do. But it’s good to hear from other mummies in similar situations. Thank you very much!

He went to bed at 7 upstairs in his cot and we stayed downstairs. Obviously it is against guidelines but I read the research which is flawed/still quite unknown and I made the risk assessment I felt comfortable with.

I meant a HOOD type thing not a good type thing. Hopefully you know what I meant 😂

A combination of things, when they would only sleep on me I’d just keep them on me till we went to bed. Then we got a Rockit and did evening in the pram with a snooze shade and from about 3/4 months we noticed a regular before 8pm bedtime pattern and we were disturbing him so put him to bed upstairs for a a few hours before we went to bed.
I’ve a big gap and my first went in his own room at 8/9 weeks so I didn’t think anything of putting baby to bed for a few hours alone.

I put my son up to bed in his cot and stayed downstairs. Had the monitor on. Did it since he was 11 weeks and 8 weeks when he had naps during the day

When I started putting him in the cot to get used to it*

We just put DS in his moses basket in our bedroom and put the monitor on. We went to bed around 10pm and snuck in to not wake him.

I put the baby in the hall with the door open. So technically the same space, but it was a bit darker for him.

I used to use the carrycot as a Moses basket (minus the chassis), so if he didn't wake up at our bedtime he got carried to our room. When he had a night feed he was put into the proper cot

Do you have a baby monitor?

@Unexpectedlysinglemum Yes I’ve got a baby monitor with a camera etc I just didn’t think I was “allowed” to put them in their cot or leave them on their own until 6 months. I suppose you do whatever works for you but the safe sleeping guidelines put the fear of god into you