Shall I put the baby to bed early?

[spookysoul]

DD is 7 weeks old and cannot nap in the evenings, it’s always been her fussy time. Her day time naps are a bit crap at the moment, so by about 5pm she is getting overtired and upset. I walk her round int he sling and do everything I can to get her head down for even just half an hour to keep her going until bed time, but it’s difficult to settle her and she ends up just dozing off a few times but waking up crying. So it’ll get to about half 6 and she just won’t settle for nap so we have to just bear her crying whilst we try to entertain her, bath her, do anything we can to get her through to bed time. Last bottle is given about half 7, by the time she’s in her crib asleep it’s about half 8 on average but can be slightly earlier or as late as 9pm if she’s upset and hard to settle. But I always thought that was the best time for her to be going to bed, to avoid a really early wake up.
Should I try putting her down to bed at like 7 (so last bottle about quarter/half past 6) rather than desperately trying to keep her up through the evening if she’s just miserable? I’m worried it’ll make her wake up super early in the morning (currently gets up about 7am with 2 night feeds but the couple of hours before that (so from her last feed) are very restless and she wants to stay asleep but needs her dummy putting back in constantly, so I’m normally there from about 5am doing that whilst dozing off between!). And she’s not actually happy about getting up at that time, but I have to get up with ny toddler at that time, which means she does too becuse she can’t sleep without me doing the bloody dummy dance with her. So then she’s cranky right from the get go in the morning! Maybe if she goes to bed earlier she won’t be so over tired so her sleep will be more settled? I don’t even mind if she wakes up at 6am to start the day, I’d just like to cut out that fussy period in the early hours of the morning so that I’ve actually had a block of sleep before getting up with her.
Sorry that took longer to explain than I thought!

At 7 weeks babies don't have bedtimes or naps. They have wake windows and sleep cycles. What ever you implement now will change/won't work in a few weeks more than likely. Just go with what ever she needs at the moment.

Cant you walk him in pram or sling (in house if raining) for nap at 4pm and 6/7pm then take up to bed with you at 9ish?

At 7weeks Ds would have fed roughly 6pm, 8pm, 9.30pm (and try settle into bed), then feed every 2-3 hrs overnight

@Caspianberg I do those things, but like I said, she won’t sleep properly in the evenings. She nods off a few times and just cries the rest of the time becuse she’s so tired. When i say ‘bed time’ I mean that’s the time she goes down in her crib for a big block of sleep, she won’t do that in the day and does contact naps. So it does differentiate between day time and bed time in her mind somehow.

@soxthecat22 I disagree, she will only contact nap in the day for 30-60 mins at a time (until it gets to late afternoon when it all seems to go out the window) but at ‘bed time’ she goes to sleep independently in her crib and does longer stretches.

I agree with @soxthecat22 , op. Babies change constantly. And often they can resist that last nap when actually it's really important to do your best to get it in. At 8 weeks old, ds1 went to bed at around 6, ds2 at 11. They can be so different. If you think bub needs that nap at 5/6, so whatever you can to get her to sleep (outside walking maybe?) Otherwise, try out her down early but it might mean she's awake at 4. Then you can try push for the nap again.
It's just trial and error and once you've got it sorted, it all changes again 😅

Really common in newborns. I called it the witching hour - seem to coincide with trying to cook dinner, and for dd2, putting dd1 to bed. I found from about 6-10 they wouldn't settle

@gotomomo it could be worse, older child’s witching hour was 10pm to 2am 😭

Well Sod’s Law, tonight is the first night in several weeks that she has had a decent evening nap! 4:45 to 6pm in the sling, normally she’s hysterical by now. So will stick with our normal routine for now. But in future it it gets to about 6pm and she hasn’t slept properly for hours and is obviously shattered, I’m just going to put her down for the night and see what happens

@ThisIsntThe80sPat when your 8 week old was going to bed at 6pm, what were his night wakings like and what time was he up for the day in the morning? I know all babies are different I’m just curious as to what it ‘could’ be like for us

We’ve had a 5pm bedtime since 6 weeks or so. We did the whole bedtime routine thing. I really find (even now at almost 2 yr old) that if we miss that ‘sweet spot’ where he starts to get tired then he’s just overtired and it’s really tricky settling him to sleep. Same with nap time.

He still has a 5-5.30pm bedtime now at 22 months but that results in early wake-ups. But if we try to push bedtime back he’s just really difficult to settle and still wakes up at his usual 5.30am 😴

Just to add, I’ve had to adjust my bedtime/wake-up time too to make sure I get enough rest. But I try to remember it’s only a season.

If not in a regression, he would sleep quite well and be up around 12 hrs later. He was an absolute nightmare to get to sleep but once sleeping he slept decent blocks (usually 3-4 feeds at that age in the night).

Well last nights sleep was crap even with the evening nap, so I think I will try early bed time tonight, see if it makes any difference