How long does your bedtime routine take?

[sophielouise]

I have a 10 week old EBF dd and (I know she's still v young ) but I'm curious about others bedtime routines.. at the moment we start with a bath around 6.30, but then it takes sometimes 2 hours to get her to sleep.. she goes in and out the moses basket, on and off my breast repeatedly until she eventually sleeps. During this time I'm not sure if she's feeding or just wants comfort from the breast. Every time i think she's asleep, I put her in the basket and five mins later she is awake and rooting / sucking her fist again. I don't know if she's actually still hungry or if it's just comfort. Do bottle fed babies do this? I'm curious how it would work if we changed to bottle / if DH put her to bed instead...

I have a 2yr old and an 11 week old who is also EBF. DD2 wakes up about 6.30 and has a feed. Then they have a bath together at 7. Out, dried, dressed then DD1 has a story and goes to bed. Then I take DD2 into her room and feed her, and put her in her moses basket. She doesn't normally have much at this feed because she had one only an hour ago. Sometimes she's awake when I put her down, sometimes not. She then finds her thumb and goes off to sleep.

Codicil: I am very very lucky to have a thumb-sucking self-settler!

Your DD could be sucking her fist for comfort like mine sucks her thumb. Try leaving her and seeing if she can settle herself?

One thing I would definately try is putting her in her basket before she is asleep. I found with all three of my DC's that if I put them down once they had fallen asleep on the breast they would usually wake up again fairly quickly - I think its the realisation that they are suddenly somewhere different to the cosy spot where they drifted off. I used to try and keep mine awake all through the feed (stroking the palm of their hand is a good trick to keep them awake if they seem to be dosing off while feeding), then put them down while drowsy but not quite asleep. They usually fussed for a while in the basket but would then settle themselves and sleep for longer periods (my 1st two had a dummy so, when they were tiny, I would sit with them (and keep putting the dummy in when they dropped it) until they were asleep).

As for the bedtime routine, my youngest (nearly 7 months) has a bath at 6.15pm, then BF at 6.30pm and is in bed 6.45-7pm (sometimes, now she is a bit older, we look at a book or two after the BF if she isnt too tired). We have had roughly the same routine since she was about 6 weeks old, although it did kind of depend on what time her last nap was - at your dd's age, I knew she probably wouldnt settle for bed until she had been up for at least 1.5hrs after her last nap (more like 2-2.5 hours now). So we would delay the bath a little if she had had a late tea-time nap.

hope this helpsxxx

Thanks for your replies they are interesting and useful - I will def try the keeping her awake through feeding thing. My main query is always whether she is actually hungry again so I usually end up taking her out for more breast which seems to work, although I'm never convinced that she's actually drinking anything. She spits out dummies btw. Generally she's a dream and sleeps well once asleep usually for 4-5 hours at a time. It's just the initial bit that's difficult!