Another thread on baby bedtime routine..!
I’m a second time Mum and although I feel a lot more relaxed about most things this time around, I am wondering if we should change up what we do for our little one at bedtime.
She’s 11 weeks and tends to do 2/3 hour stretches of sleep at night in the next to me cot (but this goes down to 1 1/2 hour stretches from about 3am onwards).
To help me get some sleep (as I’m ebf), my husband holds her for a few hours at the start of the night. I find this so useful - I can sleep knowing she’s going to get a good stretch and he brings her to me when she wakes hungry.
The issue is the afternoon/evening routine - or lack of! During the day her wake windows are about 1 1/2 hours and as she wakes up at different times and has differing lengths of naps, I never know quite when her last nap will be but it can be around 4:30/5, but this is too early really for her to then last until 7:30 (and we need that time to do dinner and bedtime for the toddler before my husband can have her). So I feed quite a lot between her last nap and bedtime. She can fall asleep while feeding to have a little snooze but sometimes doesn’t and either way it takes a long time for my husband to get her to sleep (and the best way is walking her up and down, gently shushing and using a running water sound!… looking at other threads though I don’t know if people go to these sorts of measures to get babies to sleep before bedtime?!
Maybe she’s not sleepy enough but then she is grouchy and has had enough milk as pulls herself off, not sure how to make the evening routine smoother for everyone while hopefully keeping the aspect of my husband holding her for a bit before bedtime!
Thank you if you’ve read this far and if you might have any ideas for us!