bedtime routine....

[Bootsalex]

Hi,
I've been advised to try and start a routine for bedtime. My baby is only 6 weeks old and I'm not expecting her to respond instantly but just to get a bit of familiarity around bed time. She usually goes to sleep around 11 which means she often sleeps until 5 which is fab. Just trying to think of ways to plan around our dinner time etc!
Any suggestions welcomed :)

Watching this thread as my baby is 7 weeks tomorrow and pretty much follows the same pattern as yours OP.

Hi my dd is 14 weeks now but we tried to do bathtime at the same time every night since we came home from hospital it wasnt a solid routine by any means but tries to bath her at 6.30/7 depending on how the feeds worked out, by a few weeks old she would cry for her bath she loves it and now most nights she is bathed and asleep by 7 sometimes 7.30. We do bath sleeping bag bottle, she still wakes to feed sometimes once sometimes twice but once she's down at night she knows its bedtime and when she does wake to feed goes straight back to sleep. I think it's good for them and you if they have a bedtime sometimes I think my dh found it restricting in the early days if he came home and wanted to go out for tea for instance but I would much rather have a baby who wants to be asleep by 7 than end up with a toddler who is still up at 10pm x

We started a routine from when DD was about 6 weeks. We didn't necessarily do it at the same time every night, but we did the exact same routine, no matter what time - bath, sleeping bag, story, feed and sleep. We just waited until she seemed to be getting tired, which at the beginning could have been 9pm ish, now it's 6:30 to 6:45 ish. Just gradually brought forward each night as she seemed to get tired earlier. She now gets grisly in the evenings but then relaxes when we take her up for her bath as she knows it's bedtime. Also, she seems to go down to sleep ok as she recognises all the signs for bedtime. I think it's never too early to start a routine as babies learn so quickly. Good luck!

Yes I started at 8 weeks - he was still cluster feeding a little bit at that stage but we started bath at 7 and aimed for sleep at 9. Gradually it got shorter and now from bath to eyes closed is 30 minutes.