Bedtime routine ideas?

[June2009]

Heya!

I'd like to establish a bedtime routine with dd (almost 7 months) and I'm not sure where to start.
She wakes up at different times every day and so the last feed is always at different times also. She is on solids 3 times a day as well now.
Dh usually does the last feed which at the moment really varies as she used to be on 5 feeds a day but we're in the process of dropping the last one so sometimes her last feed is around 8pm, sometimes around 11pm.

We bathe her every other day (at least twice a week) and I don't want her to have a bath every night.
So I am wondering what people do, do you start your bedtime routine at the same time everynight regardless of what time they get up? (I guess after a while they will get up at the same time everyday??)
and what other things do people do as part of their routines?

Thanks for your input!

I find if my LO's are not awake by 7am I cannot work a good routine into the day. As it knocks everything backward and fouls the whole day up on lunch, naps, dinner and bed. So I wake them at 7am. How awful am I?

I confess I do the whole, bath, story, bed every night, as they love it. But I think you have to do what's best for you and your child really. It's a controversial area

Me too, i dis the following:
6.30pm
kick on mat without nappy for 10 mins
Bath
PJs
milk
teeth
story
bed by 7-7.30.

started this from abour 4 or 5 months old,

Ds is 6 now and we still do this now.(apart from nappy!)

I did this for my own sanity as some days i counted down the minutes ALL day!

Sounds like you might be in the middle of a timetable transition with her routine anyway at the moment? But, as Mum of 5 who likes her evenings calm(sort of), totally agree with a regular routine. Up at 7am, keep her awake until set time for morning nap, lunch then not too late a nap at regular time in the afternoon. Work towards a 7pm bedtime, she can still have a top up feed half asleep if you like when you go to bed. We do tea at 5, play then bath at 6, 2-3 stories (she might be old enough to enjoy that now?), drink of milk, lights out at 7pm. It worked beautifully up until age 8-9. The older ones now run ring around me! A bit Gina Ford (am I allowed to say that?), but we all like the predictability. Also, if they are settled in it and then get unsettled you do know that something is wrong - otherwise never sure if tired/overtired/upset by change etc.

Thank you for your messages.

At the moment if she doesn't wake up at 7 I just take the opportunity to do some work which is why I am a bit reluctant to wake her up at 7am. She woke up at 10:30 the other day and I got LOADS done. (I work from home)

I can see that if she was sleeping by 7pm then in theory I would have more time to work in the evening instead but...
At the moment I prefer working in the morning if I can because we often have intrusive ils disrupting the routine "visitors" late afternoon 2 or 3 times a week, sometimes staying on for dinner] so when there is time for work in the evening after all that often it's late and I'm too tired.
They usually come to see dd so are very much in her face trying to get her all stimulated and leaving her to me to wind down for a nap (which makes it so much harder), you can probably tell I resent this very much.

I've been keeping a rough diary of what time she gets up/eat/sleep this week.
I insisted on no visitors this week so I can figure this out.
DD has been waking around 7/8am this week.
She has a long nap in the am, 45 minutes around 11 then sometimes another 45 minutes in pm, sometimes no nap in the pm.
She generally eats her last solids at 6pm and falls asleep after a milk feed at 7:30pm.
Then she wakes up for 9pm and she is wide awake and up for a 1 hour 1/2 after.

I have not actually tried just feeding her upstairs at that point and putting her back to bed straight away.

When do your dhs have time with the children?
See at the moment dh usually feeds her her solids at 6pm if he is back from work then most of the time he'll cook so I look after her until 7:30 and he gets time with her when she wakes up at 9pm.
(I do love cooking but dh loves it too and it helps him de-stress from work).

sorry there's a lot of details in there...

oh my goodness June2009 you could be me! My LO is just 4 months, but I am also wondering how do to a bedtime routine and also I'm not keen on doing a bath everyday as it really seems to dry out his skin. I will be working from home from 4 weeks time.

I think in an ideal world I'd have him in bed by 8pm and then up in the morning at 8am.
Currently he wakes anywhere between 7 and 10 and goes down at midnight eventually!

I will watch your replies with interest and please let me know how you get on!

I started DD on a routine from almost a beginning- she was bfed on demand, so anyway awake at all times of night, but I found a good bedtime routine was one time of day that was stable and so the rest would follow iyswim.
So, dinner around 6.30-7, then bath, bf and bed before 8.

Now she's 11 mo and we're going through a bit of a rough patch at the mo, but normally she either sleeps through or wakes once around 1am.

Sorry, but letting her sleep til 10 will not help, whatever your bedtime routine will be.
You don't have to be GF about it, but I noticed that when we all slept in during Xmas, she would have trouble falling asleep in the evening- we are still trying to go back to the way it was before.

I agree with winnybella, helmum and teaandcakes - my DS is woken up at 7am and he goes to be by 7pm. Too much sleep in the day and DS won't sleep at night so I also wake him from naps. I know other people who do 8am to 8pm so whatever suits but I'd recommend setting a get up time as well as a bed time as one won't really work without the other.

We follow the same routine every night - dinner at 5pm, quiet play and naked time, bath at about 6:30pm, quick massage, milk and bed.

DS is 6 months and now smiles when we put him in his cot at night. That's new but is so nice. He just lies there happily and goes to sleep (not so much for daytime naps but I'm working on that!). He sleeps 7pm to 7am now and has been doing that from about 5 months. It's bliss and am very grateful.

Snowfalls108 - our DS has very dry skin (like both parents lucky thing) and a friend recommend Avent Magic Cream. It's fabulous. That's what we massage on him after his bath.

hey, just wanted to say my ds gave me hell for 2 1/2 years sleep wise till I read the 'no cry sleep solution' and got a totally new routine. changed our lives.

My 14mo DS wakes when he wants to and nap when he wants to, he's generally fallen into the same napping schedule as his GF-raised friends on his own. He always wakes between 6:30 and 8:30 and now has one nap a day which can be anything between 40mins and 2.5hours, but still goes to bed at 7pm every night easily, which I'm sure is down to bedtime routine

It's tweaked as he's got older but basic format has always been the same: dinner, wear out activities (I try to do quite calm down stuff but he always wants to climb/run/make obstacle courses), bath, pj's, milk and story, teeth, bed

He has dry skin so I put a few drops of baby oil in his bath which has sorted him out

My DD (17weeks) wakes at a different time everyday, however she always seems ready for bed between 6.45 and 7.30. As soon as I see her getting sleepy/grizzly I start bedtime routine. Funny thing is as soon as she is upstairs and we start she gets all smiley and snuggly like she knows what is going to happen.

1. dim lights and put on lullaby music.
2. Strip off and kick about for 5-10 minutes.
3. put her cream on (she has dry skin).
4. Dress for bed.
5. breastfeed and snuggle.
6. Put her into cot (we warm cot with hot water bottle that other half brings up when he kisses her goodnight.

Sometime she is asleep when I put her down sometimes she is awake, but she is quite happy and just stucks her thumb.

We started this routine at about 11 weeks when we put her in her own room and it works a treat. She then sleeps through 12-13hours and I never go in and wake her. Other half works from home and office is next to nursery, so he just opens the door a little and she wakes up when she is ready.

She naps during the day when ever she wants, we have no set routine, however if she slleps past 5.30 I wake her.

Good luck

I was very go with the flow with dd. I used to let her wake in the mornings whenever she woke, I used to let her nap for as long as she wanted, even if it were 5pm. I never really had a problem with her going to sleep or staying asleep, which is why I never tried to change anything!

I used to give her solids around 6pm and then a bottle before bed at 10ish. Bedtime routine was changing into sleepsuit, bottle, cuddle, bed. I always bathed her in the mornings, she just hated baths at night and they woke her rather than settled her.

Although we had a sort of routine in that the same things happened in the same order, we didn't stick to times rigidly.

Hi June,

I thought I would comment here than on the other site.

It really depends why you are wanting to get into a routine. Is it so you can plan your worktimes better, is it because she is getting grumpy when she doesn't sleep in the afternoon and it makes it all very hard for you? What is your motivation behind wanting more of a schedule.

I know a couple of other mums like Surfermum whose babies where really good at falling asleep and the parents didn't do things the same every day, so it wasn't really an issue.

The thing is, either some of our babies are a bit rubbish at falling asleep or getting enough sleep, when they don't have some sort of structure AND/OR our lives are quite structured and we really need a routine to ensure everything happens relatively smoothly for all the family.

If you do decide to try and set a routine, then the most basic one is to simply decide what time your baby will go to sleep and what time they will wake up. For most people this seems to allow either 11 hours sleep or 12 hours sleep continuously but some may be just 10. So depending on your household routines, think about what would be the best time to go to sleep and to get up. The next thing you may decide to do is to push for a big sleep in the middle of the day - this would allow you to get some work down, but clearly you don't want it to be in the afternoon when all the fun stuff is happening with your RL baby groups etc. It would need to be at a minimum 2.5 hours after she has woken up. And if she takes a big sleep not that long after waking up (it's hard to know how long she would sleep for at that time), then she may take a short nap later in the afternoon. Most people organise a lunchtime nap or a few I know an afternoon sleep and that will go on in toddler years to become the 'one' nap, so try and choose a time that will really work well for you both.

If you do decide to set down exact times though, your baby will come to expect things to happen at that time, so some people do build in a little flexibility if they aren't always sure they will be able to do everything exactly at the same time.

C'est tout. Bonne chance Juin.