Help me get my evenings back?

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Hello all, seeking the MN wisdom...

Currently DD is 20 weeks and we co-sleep because I BF and she wakes every 2 hours or so. The bedtime routine seems to be working (in that she knows its bed time and goes to sleep) but its getting to the point where I need my evenings back.

Here is the issue. Until relatively recently, DD would be downstairs with us until about 9 or 9.30 (if my DH was procrastinating) then she would have bath, feed, and we would both go to sleep together.

Now more recently, she is getting over tired by this time, so I have been squeezing bedtime forward, getting it to bath at 8.30 some nights. Problems here include DH does not always get home for 8.30 let alone get home in time to do bath time. I can and do, do it alone, but this means as I also go to bed with DD, we don't see him until he joins us in bed. It also means we do not speak or eat together!

So, I was thinking - fine, take her to bed, feed her to sleep, and come back downstairs. Or not. As soon as I leave the room, she knows. She wakes. I feed back to sleep or settle with shush pat, and then 10 minutes later, awake again. And so on, until I go to bed anyway. I still do not get to eat or speak to DH as I am up and down the stairs all night. Or he is.

We have been trying for a few weeks now, no improvement.

Obviously not keen on CC as she is so young, and not keen on going to bed at 8.30 either. She will not let me leave her though, and will not go to sleep downstairs in the basket (its too small, and things like the TV are waaaay to interesting to go to sleep with)

Any ideas? I can only just cope with not having had more than 2 hours sleep in a row in the last 20 weeks, please don't tell me I also have to never see my husband and go to bed at 8.30 too?

Just my personal opinion but that sounds a bit late for LO to go to bed. I'm the furthest thing from an expert, but with my DD (11 weeks), once we brought bath and bed time forward I now actually get some time with my DH! I start bath about 6.15, then into sleep suit warmed by radiator, then BF then sleep (rocking usually, shush pat doesn't seem to work!). I stay with her for at least 15 mins after she's down and asleep, at which point it's about half 7, 8 and I get a good couple if hours with DH.

We previously had her up till 9-ish but then she'd be so overtired she wouldn't go down till midnight!

Could you try bringing her bath and bedtime earlier? It might take a few evenings for her to get used to the new routine but in the long run it will be worth it. Also you may find that she'll sleep longer than 2 hours - at her age she should be having one good 5 - 6 hour stint. If she's overtired, it could be the reason she wakes up so much, plus having mummy milk on tap whenever she wants!

Anyway, that's what worked for me, hope you do manage to get your evenings back!

HTH :)

I feel your pain - at that age we were still clusterfeeding all evening (no one had told DD or I that she was supposed to stop doing that at 3 months!) so I was pinned to the sofa - so I was downstairs and seeing DH but basically couldn't move and felt very restricted. After a while I started putting her down in her bouncy chair asleep - seemed to work much better than putting her down flat in bed - and she'd sleep in that until we went upstairs to bed. Can't remember what age we finally started putting her upstairs to sleep in bed until we went up but I'm pretty sure we didn't get around to having a proper bedtime routine until she was 9 months (she did take to it right away though).

Can you fool her into thinking you're still there, eg wrapping a piece of clothing you've been wearing round a (fairly cool!) hot water bottle? Or get her attached to some sort of comforter rather than to you (to be fair, this never worked for us ...).

If it helps, I think you are probably right in the middle of the 4-5 month sleep regression hell, so you might find things do start getting better soon :)

Also worth bearing in mind that I currently have two threads running in the sleep forum, so I'm probably not the best person to be giving advice

When you settle her to sleep can you play some white noise in the background? A white noise CD or a detuned radio? I hate that we used it but it let mine sleep much better when they were still unsettled in the evenings. We had a CD on loop but it worked! Over time we just turned it down and down some more until they slept fine without it.

With my two they would be so overtired by 8.30pm that I wouldn't stand a chance of getting them to sleep easily, even though they are really good at going to bed, especially if I tried to give a bath at that time. It would be too much for them and they wouldn't settle and would keep waking.

Could you try putting her down at 7-7.30pm one night having spend 20 minutes with the light dim, soft voice cuddles etc? She might just amaze you and drift off happier because she isn't overtired.

Earlier bedtime would be my advice I am afraid,she will be very overtired by 8.30..