Is this what people do with babies?

[ThisNimblePeer]

How do people manage to bring their kids up on no bedtime routine etc? Like, not following consistent naps for a baby? My SIL has a 3 yr old boy and a 4 month old baby and the poor bugger seems to just constantly be dragged around everywhere which i understand that’s life, shopping needs to be done etc but what im puzzled about is stuff like going to functions and staying there until 12am? The baby doesn’t sleep and has awful reflux and she and her mum just put it down to being a fussy, high needs baby but there is no structure to naps or a wind down at night for bedtime between say 7.30-9… the toddler is go go go all the time which I understand but why not protect the babies naps and bedtime? Is that just how it is? My partners family doesn’t understand why we protect our 9 month old naps so much and why we structure our life around him so much and honestly I often say and get quite angry about it, because how can you not? It’s a baby at the end of a day… I co sleep with my little guy and I’m super lucky he sleeps through the night with me. I’m strict on naps and haven’t even been to any baby classes yet as it clashes with his morning nap. Whenever we get asked to go out for dinner we get told the table is booked for 6 pm by partners family and we always say no, that’s when we eat and or do bath time then chill and play … I feel sometimes they perceive my way of parenting as something that isn’t right.

We all chose to parent differently. I did not chose to parent they way you do. your choices wouldn’t have suited our family

We were very flexible with ours when they were very little and they adapted well.

Routine is more important for a 3 year old than a 4 month old baby. Baby can sleep wherever and whenever. But even then our 3 year old was very adaptable.

Can’t you just accept we all do things differently.

Both of mine had fairly consistent nap times as babies but those naps could happen anywhere, sling, pram, car, cot, on me while I had a cup of coffee. We'd also happily take a baby out to an evening event (as long as it was appropriate) because they can sleep anywhere. I had friends who were absolute slaves to naptime and schedules and it looked exhausting, not to mention totally unsustainable once you've got more than one kid.

I don’t think you understood my question. I was trying to gauge if you think such a delayed routine is damaging to every family who practises it (babies and small kids out and about until midnight, for example)? And if yes, do you believe whole regions of the planet who practise them, are actively damaging their babies?

I never said your opinion was that the UK was doing something wrong. Not really sure where that came from…

I'd like to suggest that the children you hear screeching their lungs out at various venues are doing so because they have never been taken to any place where they weren't entertained and have never been trained to accompany adults peacefully to places the adults wanted to go. Equally, the parents have not had enough practice keeping their children feeling interested in things that do not on the surface have much appeal to children, because they have palmed off the hard bits of parenting.

This is reassuring because he sounds similar to mine. 30-40 minute chunks of sleep were all she could manage until maybe 13/14 months. Now she'll nap for an hour (maybe even a little longer) most days, which is a revelation to us. Still a 'bad' nightime sleeper, but better than she was (her good days are still worse than most of her peers' bad days though 🙄).

In the pre-school years I had to have a military routine. Lone working parent with health issues. Without it I would have fallen apart. We never had an evening out at anything.

I love the idea that Seville only exists for it's architecture and therefore every single child present is a tourist! 😂😂😁

We had very structured nap and bed times for our kids. With hindsight it was stifling.

I wish id been more flexible with their routines. We had friends that could attend parties etc with their kids and they would run around until they got tired and then just sleep anywhere.

Mine both wanted to be in their dark rooms by 7pm or they got grumpy.

How old is your daughter?

My son appeared to need very little sleep during the day but how long he needed it and when varied day by day (I posted earlier that when I let go of "routine" it became much less stressful for everyone, as I wasn't trying - and failing - to force a nap when he was "supposed to").

Honestly it became easier when he didn't nap at all. He dropped his nap quite early (under 2yo at home and 2yo at nursery) and life changed a lot after that, for the better. We have quiet time during the day to help reset, but not having the pressure of trying to get him to nap is like having a weight lifted. Bedtimes have been better too, as he's actually tired by early evening.

This!

My husband and I are not structured people , our lives are busy and to many, chaotic. Trying to force a structure on our child would have been impossible for us and made
us miserable, not that it would have succeeded, maybe for a week before we broke it. DS didn’t sleep well in his cot but happily in the pram or car, so we just let him nap on the road, or whilst out. We had friends that had to be back for nap time and it drove me mad, you can’t do anything because by the time first nap is over and you’ve met somewhere, it’s time to go home for the second.
Of course we had a rough idea of timings, we know after lunch he wants a sleep so we will try and make sure we are travelling somewhere around that time, or we will stay later at a friends so we travel back at bedtime (after 7) but it isn’t a hard and fast rule, just what suits best. In Italy we were out eating ice cream at 10pm, he’d just crash when we
got home. Life’s too short to be restricted more than necessary in our minds. Doesn’t seem to have done DS any harm.

You do you but there is no way I would have been at all regimented. It was lovely to have plans throughout the day and I wasn't going to be turning down invites on a night because of bedtime. It didn’t have any effect on baby at all.

Both of ours are now adults the only routine we followed when they were babies was our horses , we never had set nap times or bedtimes and we all survived .

It's absolutely brutal isn't it? You will get through it though, and she will eventually sleep though. My baby is now a teenager and he slept through till 11am on bank holiday Monday!

Wow lots of replies on this post. just wanted to say that when I said strict I think people took it literally like I’m forcing my baby to sleep on the dot at a certain time in the day, that isn’t the case 😂 he sleeps either 2 or 3 times a day either for an hour for each or an hour and then two in the afternoon. I couldn’t imagine forcing him to go out somewhere when he’s on the cusp of having a nap. Not saying that’s what people do - obv people work out timings and ok maybe sone don’t. And it’s not the case that I don’t ever leave the house because of it - we go out to shops and take the dog out for an hours walk everyday, we visit family and my parents come round when he’s had a nap. He stopped sleeping in the stroller two months ago, he’s a proper fomo baby super bright and wanting to be up and running already. Super active for his age. He’s now soundly asleep next to me on the boob as I’m typing this - I’m sure this will enrage some people 🤣 perhaps im just super obsessed with my kid, I just want him to be rested abd happy and thriving.

And what I will take from writing a post on mumsnet is that a lot of people really just don’t give a fuck on here, I wasn’t being aggressive or one sided I was curious to see why or how other women do it. ‘You just wait till you have another’ well Karen I’m not going to, I only wanted the one. I shall be burned at the stake for this. Goodnight everyone I’m off to a boring sleep xxxz

Ah you've lost me now that you've used that misogynistic slur.

Kindly don't refer to women like that.

Ah yes. The ole Karen.

You sound utterly obnoxious, op.
As if anyone really cares about how well you protect your darling’s nap time.
Bore on.

Yes. That one.
I was very much on your side until I read that.

It's good to have routine, but you also need to be able to step away from it to do stuff. So I wouldn't say no to going out for dinner at 6 every now and then.

Some people do manage without a routine. Usually the reasoning is that the second child needs to fit in with the toddler's needs. It works for some

My eldest had awful reflux - felt like she never slept or had very little. We tried to do routine and it was pointless. It affected my mental health as all the good babies would have a bath and bed my child didn’t get that memo,

My second was a completely different baby and experience, we didn’t necessarily have a strict routine but she did have a rhythm. Slept well, never coslept. Would sleep anywhere she wasn’t fussed.

I’ve learnt it’s the baby, all the plans in the world and the baby really can upside down those plans. Having a non sleeper reflux baby doesn’t really work with a protected nap time. While in the thick of no sleep I’d have taken any nap anytime.

You were curious as to the why’s and how’s, but became rude when people tried to explain their why’s and how’s. Very bizarre attitude from someone who is “curious”.

It’s interesting you didn’t answer some very valid questions, perhaps we didn’t satisfy your curiosity enough.

She's 16 months. She does one nap a day now, which varies in length between 30 minutes and 90 minutes or so, but usually an hour. She does 10.5 hours total in the day, on average (according to Huckleberry. I track naps). Very hard to get to sleep, even though still feeding to sleep. She's awake now, been awake about an hour, and will be for at least another hour, more likely two. She happy out playing 🙄

She doesn't nap in creche at all, they haven't been able to get her to sleep. On those days though she's exhausted and crashes once we collect her, either sleeps in the buggy or in the car, or in my arms once home.