Bedtime routine help for 1 year old

[OneBigToDoList]

Hi all, my baby has just turned one and I need help with his bedtime routine 🙏
I’d really love to make bedtime calmer for us all.

We’ve had a consistent routine since he was around 3 months old, but as he’s gotten older its just not working. Our problem is that everything hypes him up or makes him upset, so by the end of the routine he is upset and stressed (as am I) and all that will do is the boob. This is our routine at the moment, any help or thoughts would be much appreciated!!

5/5:30pm - dinner
5:30 - 6:30pm - play
6:30pm - bath
7pm - Pjs and teeth
7:15 - feeds to sleep
Usually asleep by 7:30/8pm

He’s usually happy until he gets out of the bath, and then screams through getting dry, dressed and teeth brushed - this is the part I’m struggling with, as I know bedtime is supposed to be calm and I hate the thought that he’s going to sleep stressed. He won’t let my partner settle him either.
He will sleep until about 9:30pm and again will only settle for me. Usually wakes again at 11pm or 1am when I bring him into bed with me. He’ll then feed on and off when he wakes up through the night. I’d really like to stop this.

I would love to introduce a book but as I say by the time he’s dressed he’s usually screaming and only the boob will do. I’ve tried putting him in the cot drowsy but he screams - I also find it really hard to settle him in the cot, it seems trickier to me than when he was in a Moses basket.

I had thought about moving the feed and teeth brushing earlier so we can clean teeth after milk (and not have the traumatic brushing so close to sleep time), and also so someone else can eventually do bedtime, but do they need a bit of a gap between dinner and the last feed?

Would love to hear of other’s routines and any suggestions ❤️

Hey! It sounds like you've done a great, consistent job with the bedtime routine, but it's natural that it may need changing up as your little one gets older. One size doesn't fit all forever 😊

Could you look at starting bedtime slightly later? Depending on what time he's awake the next day and how many hours of sleep he gets during the daytime, it could just be that the routine is starting too early now. Especially if he's waking up after a short time, as if it were a nap. My little one is 2.5 yrs old and we do bedtime at 8pm, which works for us as he's up at 8am and has 1 or 2 hrs of sleep during the day. But of course it varies by each schedule.

Some ideas that have helped me... For brushing teeth, I always sing a song with my son to make brushing more fun. Sometimes I'll ask what song he'd like to hear (always wheels on the bus! 😆). You could incorporate a book after pyjamas are on after the bath and before milk. You could choose one together and do a different one every night to make it more exciting.

Good luck trying different things to fit your schedule. I'm sure you'll be fine! 😊

If getting out of the bath is a trauma, couldn't you do the bath at another time? It doesn't sound like a very good bedtime activity.

At that time ours was:
Milk
Story
Nappy
Teeth
Cuddles
Done

I remember my DS being like this arou d rhat age. He was getting over-tired.
We did dinner 5 - 5:15 (he's a fast eater)
Play 5:15 - 6:00
Bath 6 -6:30 (includes running the bath and drying off and into pyjamas afterwards)
6 - 6:50 quiet play / book reading downstairs ending with tooth brushing.
6:50 bedtime book, bedtime song & put down to sleep.

If he was acting ratty we just brought the bedtime bit forward by a few mins.

How long does he nap for? At that age DS was doing a 15 min power nap around 9:30am and a 2hr15 min lunch nap from 12:15 - 2:30pm but he did go through a phase of resisiting his morning nap just after he turned 1 but we stuck with it and he properly dropped that nap around 14 months.

Thanks everyone, some really good ideas and points for us to think about.
He is usually up at 6:30am, at the moment he has an hour nap in the morning (roughly 9:30-10:30) and another hour in the afternoon (usually 2:30-3:30 and I will wake him if it goes over as I find he won’t go to sleep if he naps later than this)
I’m hesitant to remove the bath as he does enjoy it, it’s just afterwards, but if things continue I will definitely try it. He just gets so mucky at dinner time I do feel he needs a good clean!
This evening we did teeth before bath and that helped a lot. My next challenge is replacing the boob with a beaker but I think I’ll leave that for a while 😂

Start the routine slightly earlier, brush teeth in the bath, pick a book together whilst you get him in his PJs

Just breastfeed him to sleep.

I still breastfeed my 2y9m, it's so easy. Loads of mums I know are dealing with their child struggling to wind down and bouncing off the walls, and mine winds down right away because of breastfeeding. A beaker of milk can't replicate breastfeeding.

You really need to be brushing his teeth after his final milk feed.

We don’t have a bath every night. For us - and with a previously terrible sleeper - what’s worked well is a short and tight bedtime routine: PJs at 7.10, feed at 7.15, teeth at 7.25, in his sleeping bag and cot at 7.30. At 12 months we’d have to sit with him while he fell asleep, but now it’s cuddle, down and out the door.

It’s fucking glorious and I’m embracing it as I know he’ll hit a new phase at some point and it will all go to pot.

Hey OP, I have a 1yo baby girl and our evenings sounds quite similar. She likes her bath but isn't keen on getting ready afterwards and usually once she's ready she's a bit restless....I think the bath makes her sleepy and then she doesn't have much left in the tank. She also isn't keen on getting her teeth brushed.

I put her in her sleeping bag, she says goodnight to daddy and then I take her through to the bedroom and we read a book, usually with flaps/moving bits...otherwise she's not too interested 😂

Then she usually signals she's tired by pressing her head into me or starting to grizzle, so I turn white noise on and the nightlight off and feed her to sleep.

Also solidarity re feeding to sleep through the night, same here. Although I guess for me it's not so much feeding as just suckling for a minute or so.

My DD is 13 months and our routine is pretty much the same except we do teeth in bath and milk before PJs. Used to do PJs first but she was always upset to come out of the bath, milk calms her down and she’s much easier to dress once she’s settled.

The night wakenings seem like a separate issue. We sleep trained, which is not for everyone but it absolutely worked for us. We’ve gone from constant wakenings and feeds from 12am onwards and ending up in our bed to sleeping from 7 to 7 in her own bed with no feeds. I know some people view it as cruel but IMO it was crueller for DD (and me) being awake and crying for hours every single night. 2 nights of sleep training and we have been sleeping all night for months (touch wood).

@GlitteryGreen they sound very similar! The pop-up books is a good idea, i think he’ll be more engaged with it. I sometimes wonder if the book thing is more for me than him, as I always looked forward to reading to my baby!

@Angeldelight50 i think I’d like to move the milk feed eventually, maybe once he’s settled at nursery, and then just cuddle to sleep. Do you just feed baby in their towel after the bath? How much of a gap do you have after dinner and milk?

Thanks again everyone x

@OneBigToDoList Yeah, feed her still in towel. I did this a couple of times to settle her and it seemed to work so we stuck with it. She’s pretty docile after her feed so easy enough to dress then I put her in cot drowsy. She usually has a little fuss when I leave the room but she gives in to sleep fairly quickly.

Timing varies depending on what we’ve been doing that day but usually about 1/1.5hrs between dinner and milk.

How have your nights been since posting? X

@Angeldelight50 thank you. Feed in towel sounds good, I sort of follow him around the room to dress him at the moment, so more docile would be good!

I’ve made a couple of tweaks from this thread (starting routine earlier and teeth before bath) which have definitely made things calmer already. Still lots of wake ups during the night unfortunately, but I think I need to work on his naps a bit. Honestly baby sleep has always felt like the dark arts to me 😂 Thanks for asking x