is it just luck?

[bigkidsmademe]

I have a lovely 5 1/2 week old boy. At the moment I am of course letting him sleep whenever he wants. In the day this is in the sling or pram, on and off all day .At night he does sleep in his basket but feeds every 2 hours. Basically, he is doing exactly what I expected such a small boy to do.

But reading these threads has filled me with thoughts about what I ought to be doing! Should I be doing very calm, gentle things to encourage him in his future sleep? My mum says not to bother, it is all luck and down to the baby themselves - I slept through at 4 months and my sister at 6 YEARS (gulp). Is she right? Is it all luck of the draw?

I beat myself up about getting a "Routine"
Got one at 4 months:
bed at 7pm
feed at 11-12
feed at 5am
wake up at 7am
one 1 1/2 - 2 hours nap during day and 2 30 mins.

He is now 6 months and its all gone a bit wonky...
still napping the same and going to bed at 8 and feeding at 12am, but often wakes 2-3 times for a cuddle. Some nights are amazing. Only waking once, but most nights I feed him twice and get up twice for cuddle. You know whats right for your baby, the best advice I can give is don't be too hard on him about routine. Things like teething, colds, growth spurts will throw all your hard work out the window!! I like to make sure bed time is always the same otherwise he gets over tired. But other than that I take each night as hey come :)

Listen to your Mum :) Especially the part about not bothering.... I think a lot of it is genetic/nature, some of it is luck, part of it is the atmosphere baby finds themselves in & part of it is how 'bothered' you are.

One thing I would say, however, is that babies develop quite rapidly and this can sometimes catch you off-guard and make you think you should be doing something. One minute they do nothing but sleep (like yours) and the next they're a bit more awake and need a little more stimulation. One month they sleep all night and the next they're awake all night... and you sometimes need someone to say 'teeth?' before the penny drops.

But do listen to your mum. She's been there, done it and got the t-shirt....

in that case I'll carry on with the sling and not worry!

Too much emphasis is put on routine from an early age - too early an age. I feel i spent the first few weeks worrying far too much about this rather than enjoying my DS.

Having said that, there are a few subtle things you can start doing now to help your LO in the right direction.

I've always made sure we do an evening wind down right from when my DS was a couple of weeks old. This is just a nice warm bath, cuddle and feed (in the same place every night - a place i didn't feed him during the day) with the lights very low, no loud talking just whispering if necessary. This is all with the very general aim of helping him distinguish between night and day. During the day we went about our usual business, kept things light, noisy etc.

In the early days the timing of this routine changed according to when DS was fed, awake, etc. But now (12 weeks) we have a consistent bedtime between 7 and 8pm. I found that as soon as the bedtime clicked into place, everything else followed naturally and my DS found his own routine (which will change over time) which works pretty well for us.

Don't get hung up about a routine this young, but do start one off with gentle evening wind down - typical routine is bath (though we never bothered with this every day), bottle/boob, books (yes, even for a little one), bed. But at 5 weeks, I simply went through the motions of this routine fully expecting DD not to conform on all night :-) By all means start a bedtime routine now (we did) but don't be rigid about it as it's unlikely your baby will conform to it so young :-)

As Matana, my only intention in DD's early weeks was to try and get my DD used to day and night distinction - so any activities after 7pm were low key and in soft light. This doesn't suit some parents/babies but it suited our family and DD was "sleeping through" from 12 weeks at 7pm - up at 11pm for last feed - down until the morning. She grew into the night time routine we established from birth. But then again we were lucky and it doesn't necessarily work for all families/babies.

ah, this is interesting, thanks! So, we have been thinking of a routine recently, but the timing always puts me off. Why do people do 7pm - is it just for future school attendance? If we did 7pm DH would never see him. Why not 8pm or even later?

I'm doing day / night difference now but I guess that starts at 10pm when I go to bed! Should I start thinking of putting him in his cot for naps or will these change so much in the future it's not worth it yet?

thanks!

I did a 7pm bed/bath/wind-down time because, as a single parent from birth, I wouldn't have had any time to myself otherwise. Plus he was pretty tired by then and also I wanted to start a good bed-time habit for the future. Worked really well on all levels.

Try the cot for naps. At this stage, there probably won't be much of a rhythm to them but if he gets the idea that his cot is a nice safe place to be that will probably help when he comes to sleeping there at night.

7pm is his bedtime because I want my evenings to myself!
And, if I kept him up till 8/9 he would be over tired and the night was terrible! Although saying that, he has just dropped off on my lap so I've put him to bed. Last night was a bad night, was awake from 8:30pm- midnight then woke again at 3am, 4:30am then 7am

So he will either sleep through (PLEASE GOD) or be awake in an hour or so.

I think a small percentage may be down to luck but I also believe a baby needs to be taught how to sleep without being fed, rocked, patted etc.

There are plenty of threads on here of mothers in absolute despair because their babies wake multiple times a night, wont sleep unless being walked in a pram/sling etc.

So although letting them sleep as and when they need to is great if it works for you, IMO it's important to teach baby how to self settle.

I reckon sometimes it is. I have 3 ds's all of whom have always slept well. ds1 was routinized to within an inch of his life (he is the heaviest sleeper, to be fair), ds2 had a reasonable routine, ds3 (4m) virtually no routine whatsoever apart from bed at 7ish (tho he is still having a "nap" now at 6pm) - they all have been "good" sleepers who will sleep in their moses baskets/cots/beds with only a little bit of settling (so far so good with the baby). The only broken nights sleep we ever have are once in the night for a breastfeed until post-weaning (after the initial few weeks and barring the odd illness of course). We are very lucky. I have friends in absolute dispair who ask me chat they are doing wrong, what we did etc and as far as I can tell we have done nothing special or different from anybody else.

My DP is a very easy/heavy sleeper (I'm not) so I reckon there might be a genetic element.

Also, I did all the bad "rod for your own back" things like letting them fall asleep on boob, in arms, in carseat etc etc - doesn't seem to have made much difference.

Having said all that we've always been pretty strict with the 7 bedtime so that might help a bit (need evenings for ourselves as others have said), I used to feel bad sometimes making them go to bed when they were very cute and playful at that time but it maybe stops them getting too overtired so sleep better generally.

so you guys that have successful 7pm bedtimes, what age did you start doing it then? I still get anxious when he's not in the room with me! Suppose i need to get over that soon...

pretty early, by about 6-8 weeks I think - the baby is 17 weeks now and has been sleeping the first part of the evening at least since about 10/11 weeks or so if I remember correctly. he was going 7-7 but last couple of weeks waking again in the latter half - colds and growth spurt I think. We start gradually as they obviously won't really go to sleep at that time in the early days when still feeding every 2hrs etc. I think we always put them in the moses basket around 7 ish irrespective while putting older ones to bed and just went and got them again when necessary (this is after the first few weeks when they would doze in our arms most of the evening while we were watching tv etc) until gradually it "stuck". Have always had to swaddle them too to get this to happen. Not that we are experts or anything but have always seemed to be able to get them to do 7-12 reasonable easily (some rocking to sleep too in the early phases I guess, DP sometimes used to lie on the bed for awhile next to him but not needed anymore).

Daytime sleeping is pretty shambolic though....

5 1/2 weeks you are right he should still be with you! I think we are talking more 9/10 weeks etc. We have a breathing monitor which always put on in the evening and frequently check them all before we go to bed.

sorry keep thinking of things - 7pm is a guideline, is often closer to 8, but you're right, when they're older you pretty much have to hit 7pm or they will not be able to get the recomended 11/12 hours sleep in before nursery/school and will be little sods and you will get told off by their teachers .... I do struggle with 7pm on days when I am working and don't get home from nursery pickup til half six of course.

Any hoo we are getting way ahead! Your ds sounds like a gorgeous cuddly 5 week old and there is absolutely no rush to do anything! Just gradually head to getting him sleeping in the evening and all will be well!

We always let them sleep in bed with us when they wanted to as well and that also doesnt seem to have casued any issues - for us, all babies/famillies different of course.

We did 7pm because we need to be up in the mornings at 6.30am to go to work and get DD off to daycare so to ensure she had the full 12 hours sleep we decided early on to start the routine with a 7pm bedtime and it's stuck ever since (DD now 2.7 years). It means that she gets a good night's sleep. My DH doesn't see her at night as he gets in from work after 8pm but that's the way it has to be so long as we need to be up at 6.30/7am.

We aimed for 7pm bedtime from birth, btw. Didn't always work, obviously, by by 12 weeks it was consistently working 99% of the time. Again, we were lucky with DD's sleep.

Naps - I wasn't too bothered about where so long as she napped so it was mixture of pram (when out and about), cot/basket, and electric swinging chair (for when she was being particularly grizzly about settling to sleep).

I think 7ish is when most babies naturally get tired for their night time sleep - but this varies of course. It also allows us some 'us' time in the evening and allows for 12 hours of sleep when i re-start work and he starts going to the childminder.

We have a window between 7 and 8, depending on how tired DS seems, whether he's been a bit grotty during the day etc.

From memory we started trying to settle him in his moses basket for 'bedtime' around 6 weeks. At first it meant running up and down stairs a lot or bringing him down when he wasn't tired enough to fall asleep/ was too tired to fall asleep without help. But each night we put him in his moses basket we persevered a bit more before giving in and bringing him downstairs. Pretty quickly he sussed that it was bedtime and his moses basket was a nice, cozy, safe place to fall asleep in. We were lucky - we got there pretty quickly (around a week before he would usually fall asleep within half an hour - with the occasional blip - and soon after he was asleep as soon as his head hit the mattress!) He's always been a good self settler though.

By the way (again, sorry - like preghead, I keep thinking of things) - you seem to be doing great: your baby is so young and it's natural you want to keep him with you in the evening and it's natural your DH wants to see him when he gets back from work. I'd say stick with what you're doing but be mindful of the routines and 7pm-ish bedtimes posters have written about here. In time you'll likely do something similar. For now - enjoy! :-)

thanks everyone! Lots of useful advice here.

I'm certainly not going to start thinking of routines or anything scary. He is on me in the sling all day and still with me all evening till we go to bed ourselves. But I am thinking of beginning gentle things to encourage him to sleep.

From next week we've decided to begin bath and bed routine at 7, so sleep at 8. Currently he only gets a bath every other day so that will be good. And I can open all his books which I can't wait to do! Then we've decided to watch our DVD boxsets in bed on the laptop rather than downstairs, so we're in the same room as him.

Other than that I'm going to relax and carry on letting him snuggle into me all day and night! It is lovely and won't be for long, will it. He's already gone up a clothes size and made me weep he is growing up (possibly slightly hormonal )