2.5 month sleeping late

[Peanutbutteryday]

Hi all. My 2.5 month sleeps well - 11pm to 5am, then 5am till 8am, then again until about 9.30am. My question is how do I pull her bedtime earlier. She honestly won’t go in her cot until 10.30/11pm earliest! Between c 8pm and 11pm she feeds and dozes but won’t go in cot. It’s not practical her lying in either as I have older dc. Help! She’s an ebf baby and just falls asleep after a feed if she is tired so I’m not actively putting her back to sleep just feeding her when she is hungry

Sorry, I don’t have advise that will help! We get ebf 2.5mo baby down about 9:30, but by cosleeping… we recently moved bedtime earlier, like you are trying. We split the big feed before and after family dinner/bath time. But it still involves me taking her to bed about 8:45-9:15 and feeding her to sleep. I then lie in bed reading until I fall asleep. She wakes at 1:30, 4:30 and then is up between 5:30 and 7. She then naps in her basket while morning routines ensue! We sometimes take her out still asleep!

Do you have any tips for getting ebf baby into the cot? We do not have a next-to-me, just a cot or basket. She wakes very quickly, unless it’s the morning nap! She currently feeds at all of the above mentioned wake times. Usually less than 15 minutes, but can be up to an hour.

Not an expert by any means, but have read a handful of books about baby keep and if I remember correctly, I don’t think their day night rhythms re fully formed at that age. I think most advice would focus on getting them up at your ideal wake-up time every day and out into daylight outdoors asap (not easy with the dark mornings at this time of year!), the theory being that their body clock should shift and earlier bedtime follow after 2-3 weeks of doing this consistently

At 2.5 months I wouldn't worry at all. That is still very young.

Our son was still going to bed late for the night after 10PM until around six months (although he was consolidating sleep through the night by 3-4 months) then we introduced sleep training and gradually worked down to a reasonable bedtime between 7-8.30PM.

Good sleep for babies is a destination which doesn't necessarily have a one way path. There WILL be regressions along the way, and you've just got to ride those out and find adaptations which work for you all.

Thanks for replying! I don’t really have any advice to get EBF baby into their cot. My first dc also EBF hated being put down and wouldn’t go in her cot. Trust me we tried everything in the books. DC2 is perfectly happy in her crib and we didn’t try anything in particular - she just went in it. I very much believe a lot of things are down to baby temperament and regret wasting so much energy trying different things with dc1 when it was clear she wasn’t ready!
enjoy your couple of hours reading in bed if you can! X

Thanks I’ll give it a go! I guess we have been lazing round the house more over Christmas so perhaps not helpful to make her realise it’s day!

The early 7/8 pm bedtime was only possible from around 4 months for us. Before that, DS would treat any sleep like a nap i.e. wake after 42 minutes and be awake for ages.

Thanks! Did you change anything or did it happen naturally

I thought you meant 2.5 years my months 🤦‍♀️

Feeding and dozing with you in the evening is perfectly normal at this age.

If you do want to start to go to bed a little earlier though you could start to wake her 15 minutes earlier in the morning. So instead of 9.30 wake her at 9.15, get her changed into day clothes and take her outside for a few minutes to get a blast of daylight. Once you’ve done this for a few days, at least 3, wake her at 9am and do the same. Keep going till you’ve got a wake up and bedtime that suits both of you.

The other alternative is to just accept that she has a routine and you get to spend your evenings chilling out downstairs and just go with it.

They do this around 2 months. Realistically, if you have older children, they all need to get to bed, so assuming you have a partner, you need to tag team. Your partner does older ones and you focus on baby until you get into a routine. I don’t think either of mine really ‘went to bed’ before 10pm until around 3 months. I would do a feed and hand them to Dh so I could sleep for a few hours. But they didn’t really settle into a routine for a bit.

Otherwise, it sounds like you need to adjust her sleeping hours. She won’t be able to sleep til 9:30 once school starts again, so I’d wake her up when you get up 6/7/8am and get on with your day. Once she’s used to a 7am wake up, then she’ll fall into going to sleep earlier.

Thanks everyone will see how we get on this week with nursery drops for dc1. I expect she’ll just nap in the bassinet for the 45 min round trip as we go on foot

It happened naturally! I think we put him down one evening and he just kept on sleeping instead of waking up after the usual 40 minutes.