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Sleep

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Original poster

No bed time routine at 12 weeks - help please

19 replies

Tinker2013 · 04/08/2013 22:49

Hi All

I wondered if anyone could help me, I have no bedtime routine for my 12 week old. I'm not even sure where to start to be honest, everything I seem to read is bath, pj's, a story and in cot/moses basket for 7pm

My little one hates the bath, well the bath is ok, it's actually the getting out of the bath / drying etc so he gets a bath in the morning, so can only do story, pj's

The only bit of a routine we have is he normally falls asleep around 10pm and either wakes up to be fed (hes bottle fed) between 3:30-4:00am or sometimes sleeps until 5:30-6:00. I never have any idea which it's going to be, whichever it is he'll be up for two hours and then fall asleep and then he'll sleep/feed as and when he wants to all day, sometimes naps are 10 mins sometimes there are 4 hours. He can only stay awake for a period of 2 hours.

What I want/need to know is:
1- should I be waking him up through the day ? Stopping him sleeping at certain times, so that hes tired for 6:30pm to start the bedtime routine (He gets very wingey if he's tired, so as mention previously he sleeps when he wants to)
2- if I put him down (Moses basket) at 7:00 and he's not tired he will scream the house down, so do I just leave him to cry or do I pick him up.

Thanks for reading and any tips / info would be greatly appreciated

OP posts:

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noblegiraffe · 04/08/2013 22:55

I didn't bother with a bedtime routine till 6 months as they are supposed to sleep in the same room as you. She stayed in the living room with us, feeding and sleeping. We changed her for bed at about 9. She was going to sleep at 11, and it gradually got earlier all by itself.

At 6 months I started changing her, giving her a feed and putting her in her cot and she now goes to sleep at about 7:30. Alternate nights I give her a bath (too many baths is bad for their skin). No stories yet, that will come when I want to stop feeding her to sleep.

K8Middleton · 04/08/2013 22:58

He's only tiny! Most babies only start sleeping more at night between 8-12 weeks. What you're doing sounds fine. If he doesn't like the bath and it has no benefit cut it out.

Sleep begets sleep so don't start cutting naps. If he's crying pick him up.

Very, very few 12wo babies sleep through. Sleeping through the night is anything from 6-12 hours and waking for feeds is completely normal.

I do have a sneaking suspicion that "bedtime routines" for tiny babies are purely marketing gimmicks to sell books and products so I am a little biased!

Most importantly op, what do you think?

chocolatemartini · 04/08/2013 23:01

Other people will advise you about routines if that's what you want, but do be careful with all these 'shoulds' and 'oughts'. I've seen friends doing valiant battles with their babies to get them to adhere to a routine. It seems very stressful for them. My own opinion is that routines for under ones are entirely for the parents' benefit. Babies don't understand time, and for me, one of the loveliest things about maternity leave was being in a timeless state with my boy, just doing what was needed at any given moment. I noticed I was much less stressed than my friends with routines.

Tommy · 04/08/2013 23:02

I wouldn't worry too much about it yet TBH. We were very anxious to get DS1 into a routine and by this age he was in bed at 7pm every night.
As a result, we could never go out for a meal or anything with him and he was 10 before he ever came to a party that finished after about 8pm
I reckon we made a rod for our own back and I was much more laid back with DS2 and 3.

noblegiraffe · 04/08/2013 23:03

Oh, and my DS (nearly 4) has never had a 7pm bedtime. I think people fix on that as that is when CBeebies finishes, but if it doesn't work for your child, don't force it on them as you'll only get yourself stressed. He usually is in bed at 8, (and up at 6:30) and that works well for him.

If you decide that bedtime is 7pm but your baby isn't tired, you're just setting yourself up for frustrating evenings trying to get him to sleep, or running up and down stairs resettling. Going with the flow at 12 weeks is just fine.

Ethlinn · 04/08/2013 23:07

That sounds a lot like my DS. Between 7 and 9 (when he was tiny anyway) was his usual awake time. Doing any sort of bedtime routine to get him to sleep from 7 was pointless and extremely frustrating. His natural sleep time was from 9 and that was it. It gradually sorted itself out and from about 16-17 wo he would go to sleep at 7ish. But it had nothing to do with me, my efforts or any routines, he did it himself.
As for any waking up during the day to move his nap times, I'd say he's waaaay too tiny for it. DS is nearly 7mo now and I only have one rule I strictly go by: never wake a sleeping baby (situations like giving medication or waking a jaundiced baby for feeds obviously excluded). I have so far found that babies are very clever and eventually everything somehow falls into place (and DS was a hellish newborn...)

Original poster

Tinker2013 · 04/08/2013 23:07

Thank you both so much for replying, I really do appreciate it.

I keep getting asked by friends/co-workers, is he sleeping through yet? and when I say no, I get a "haven't you got a routine, you need a routine. Mine were all sleeping through by 8 weeks " or something along them lines and this made me feel I was doing something wrong.

I will just carry on doing what I am doing and hopefully he will eventually sleep through.

Thank you again x

OP posts:

Original poster

Tinker2013 · 04/08/2013 23:10

X-posted with all the other posts.

Thank you all so much for replying

I am just going to let him set the routine when he wants, it seems to have worked for you ladies xx

OP posts:

Ethlinn · 04/08/2013 23:11

Chocolatemartini I love what you said about timeless state with your boy. I wish someone had said that to me when my DS was born. Initially I just kept stressing about time and how things "should" be done. It go so much more enjoyable when I decided to just..well.. enjoy the baby and forget how I "should" be doing things.

noblegiraffe · 04/08/2013 23:12

Sleeping through the night is midnight till 5am, officially. So you can say that yes, your baby is sleeping through.

Some people think it means 7pm to 7am. Ignore them, that way madness lies.

K8Middleton · 04/08/2013 23:12

People lie. They also all mean something different by sleeping through... but I can tell you no most babies do not go 7-7 at 12 weeks so stop worrying.

I don't talk about sleep unless asked and even then I try to avoid because it so often gets all parenting-top-trump. Yawn.

HappyAsASandboy · 04/08/2013 23:13

We didn't have a routine at 12 weeks either.

At about 4 months my twins started falling asleep at about 7.30pm, downstairs with us. So from then, I changed nappy and put their pjs on whenever I changed the nappies after about 5.30pm. They were therefore in their pjs before they fell asleep.

I don't think we got into a true 'bedtime routine' with stories etc until closer to 12 months or more. We also didn't do bath at bedtime as it was too stressful, so bath doesn't have to be part of the routine :)

K8Middleton · 04/08/2013 23:16

yy to never wake a sleeping baby rule. That's my only one too!

I also felt a wave of relief when someone told me that almost no healthy babies have sleep problems. Only parents do

MissOtisRegrets · 04/08/2013 23:42

Initially I also felt pressured to suss out a proper bedtime routine, but we found the bath/story combo too stimulating for DS. So instead we simply dim the lights and play a piano lullabies cd - the same one every night - when he has his bedtime feed. Much easier. And effective.

BitBewildered · 05/08/2013 00:02

Neither of my two had anything resembling a routine till they were much older. No one had told them about clocks.

chocolatemartini · 05/08/2013 09:17

If I could write a book about caring for newborns it would have these rules:

Smell your baby's head often
Cuddle your baby as much as you can
Smell your baby's head some more
Sleep when you can
Feed it when it cries
More cuddles and kisses...
Don't feel pressurised by books or well meaning colleagues who want to tell you how to look after your baby.

TallulahBetty · 05/08/2013 09:27

My initial thought is - if the bath is upsetting him, don't do it every night. Or maybe not even at night - whenever suits you both. DD is 20 months and since birth has only had baths twice a week. They really don't need one so often (unless dirty of course).

BotBotticelli · 05/08/2013 09:34

Agree with other posters, sounds like you're doing a fantastic job. Follow your baby's cues: they are all different.

If, at 12 weeks, your baby seems to fall asleep at 10pm, then I would say go with it. It will probably get a bit earlier by itself as your baby gets older, more alert, and needs more sleep to recover. One thing I would ask though is: if he falls asleep at 10pm, when is he tending to nap in the early evening?

I think it got to the stage with DS1 when he was about 3 months old that he would be wanting a nap at around 8pm. At least, i thought it was a nap, he took little cat naps at all sorts of random times throughout the day. So at that point I decided that if he wanted to go to sleep around 8pm, I would put him in the bedroom in his moses in the dark with monitor on. This meant I got to eat some dinner. He would then wake up for a bottle around 10pm, and I would feed him in the dark room and then try to put him back down to sleep. With varied results for the first couple of weeks but then he started to realise it was nighttime and settled a bit easier.

he continued to feed a couple of times in the night until around 4mo (FF) but he was in his basket from 8pm ish until 6ish.

Btw I sent myself bonkers in the first few months of DS's life trying to 'get him into a routine' and he just wouldn't be told!! He had his own ideas, and now at 8mo he has two naps per day, one in the morning, one after lunch, and sleeps 11 hours at night. Nothing I did made this happen: he just got older, more settled, and started doing things at the same time every day. It's hard but I think you have to try to go with the flow. I have promised myself I will try to be much more chilled out if we ever have a DC2.

chocolatemartini · 05/08/2013 11:01

Oh talking of cues, fascinated me when my baby was small. I found that she was completely right, I could decipher what DS needed after a bit of practice. The 'neh' sound was particularly useful to know when he was hungry.

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