Baby-led / routine confusion!

[gizmosmama]

DS is 14wks and we have been doing everything baby-led with BF and naps but have been doing night-time as a 7-7 routine. I'm now wondering why I'm forcing this night-time routine when we're following the baby-led method for everything else and that has always worked well for us and felt right. DS does go down at 7 but usually wakes frequently between 7 and 9 in the evening and between 5 and 7 in the morning. I keep putting him back to sleep using anything from a little head stroke to full on feeding and cuddling to sleep. It's obvious his natural sleep pattern would be more like 9-5 and he wakes really happy at this time where as he wakes crying when I force-sleep him till 7. What we're doing now feels wrong and I really want to change it but I'm worried about setting bad habits if I let him wake up at 5? Or should I settle him at 11 for sleep till 7? Or will he still wake at 5 so not get enough sleep? Everything else seems to have come naturally and I've just followed my instincts but this has me so confused!

I'd keep him up until 9 and then see how the morning goes he may well sleep longer just with that change.

I was going to disagree. I think some routines do evolve naturally and we were baby led too at 14 weeks but the bedtime one is a good one to set. Because sooner rather than later you will need to edge closer to that and it is much harder to radically alter bedtimes for a 7-8 month old who has been set in a habit. I would just feed to sleep or shush pat between 5-7 and gradually his own body clock adjusted to that. And even now at 2.3 with DS he knows (without a Gro clock or anything) that there is a time before which we won't be chatting or playing. In my head it was best to have this sorted when they were tiny than enforce sleep training at an older age.

How are you managing to cluster feed through the evening if they're going down at 7? Isn't that the time of day when they start on a feeding frenzy to help them sleep better in the night?

I'd follow your instinct and let him guide you.

I would do massage, bath, story and milk in bed. And then we stayed in a dark room till 7 am the next day. All feeds in the dark room (god bless the iPad and iplayer). All nappy changes in dim light. It was a bit isolating and boring but he did get the whole sleep between 7-7 thing quickly. Would wake to feed every 3 hours but promptly fell back to sleep.

We did the whole 7 pm bedtime with our first as felt like we had to. I spent weeks in a dark bedroom cluster feeding.

With DS I said sod that, he stayed down stairs with us until much later. So I didn't have to do up and down stairs, we just kept the living room peaceful quit adult TV, low lights. He had feeds, cuddles or slept in the travel cot. we'd take him up to bed with us, and starred putting him upstairs to bed when he naturally slept longer in the evenings. Worked well didn't have any problems transitioning him to a bedtime upstairs. And I do wish I done that the first time round as it was so much more relaxing.

Thanks for all the advice so far. DS doesn't seem to cluster feed anymore. He has 2 feeds (before and after bedtime routine) just before bed then that's it. His night feeds are quite variable but usually the first stretch is the long one, about 6/7 hours, then 2 hourly through the second half of the night. He's always been good at settling back to sleep straight away though.