Bedtime help.......4mo

[Sparrowlegs248]

Until last week ds was in a sling to sleep in the evening, transferred to bouncy chair asleep then up to bed when i went, feeding back to sleep. He'd stay asleep all evening in the fromt room with us.

A week ago he fought his p.m. nap and by the time he slept it was 5.30pm and we happened to be upstairs so i put him down on my bed where he slept for 3.5hrs then fed and back to sleep. We co sleep. Decided to introduce 'bedtime' although not a fixed time, just when hes ready.

Sk we go up, nappy change, story, dim light, maybe a song then feed to sleep. This 'worked' for 5 nights (needing a resttle one one night) but the last two nights hes been back down with us as is waking and not settling. I thought he was ready for a bedtime but now wonder.

What do you think? I would rather he was down with me than me up and down or spending ages upstairs resettling.

Also, it has to be me settling as its always feeding to sleep. Refuses bottle and dummy. What other way can i try?

As i write this i realise its still early days both in hislife and with this bedtime.

I may be going against current thinking, but I have always though breast feeding to sleep was a bad idea for 2 reasons - firstly it means the Mum is the only one who can settle to sleep and secondly the baby doesn't get to self soothe / settle which is a really important skill for them to achieve. Having said that 4 mths is still very small and lots of development things are happening. I think 4 mths is too young for formal sleep training
my DD wouldn't take a bottle or dummy but she would take from a spoon and later a sippy cup. Bit more of a faff but Dad can get involved and it does give you more flexibility.
I would continue to try to settle, building up your routine (personally think a story is a step too many just now - leave that for a few months) and put down before your DS is asleep. If he rouses, leave him for a short while to see if he settles himself.
Good luck

Obviously it depends on the baby, but I don't think four months is too young for a bedtime. DS is 20 weeks and has had a bedtime routine since about 8 weeks. At the time our HV advised to concentrate on sleep associations rather than the time so we started doing bath, breast and sometimes story, and gradually moved bedtime earlier. Initially we started routine about 9pm and now we start at 5pm with aim that he's asleep by 7pm.

He always feeds before I put him down, sometimes he drops off but I try to wake him up by burping him. If we're having a bad day, the 'drowsy but awake' goes out the window. I hope eventually that we can swap the order of bath, story, breast to bath, breast, story but don't think he's ready yet. My DH is very hands on but only I can settle him. He doesn't take a bottle so I'm feeling a bit trapped by bedtime at the moment but I figure I need to wait till he's being weaned before changing anything drastically.

We started a bedtime routine at 3 months and our boy def understands its bedtime.

He has fallen asleep with out feeding, bouncy chair, car or Pam movement, literally once. Ever. Happened to be in bouncy chair, not bouncing,.parked in the kitchen while i tottered about. The dishwasher was on. There is no way we can do drowsy but not asleep.

I can't even do putting down asleep at the moment. Every single time last night (many many times) he woke up.

I need to get husband to sleep in the spare room as i feel i have to keep baby quiet when i should be trying to let him resettle himself. Husband gets up at 4. And 5/6 at weekends for work.

We don't do bath at night as he finds it very exciting!

Maybe i should do bedtime later? He was shattered last night by 5.30pm having only napped once at lunchtime for an hour.

My DS2 (nearly 4 months) has had bedtime for about 5 weeks. (He goes to bed about 6pm depending on when his last nap was).

However, he's now obviously hitting his 4 month sleep regression or whatever it is that happens at 4 months, because he'll need resettling (with dummy) a few times between 6 and 7 before he'll do his long sleep. (His long sleep used to be til about midnight, now it's more like 9pm).
Basically, my advice is lower your expectations! It goes to shit at 4 months but they get through it.

Does he nap much during the day? Obviously they're all different but my 4 month old gets tricky to settle when overtired. She doesn't have big naps during the day but prefers a short nap every 1.5-2 hours.

We start bedtime at 8 and she's asleep upstairs by 8.45 and sleeps through until about 9.30am.

Whenever she's had a day when she's not napped she's slept very badly at night.

Not a good napper no. Sleeps through til 9.30?!?!! Wow.

Routines are fine if you follow your baby's lead. However, many babies take months if not years to settle into their own patterns and trying to force them stresses them and the parents. Go with the flow - cuddle them, feed them, do what works for you both. Before you know it they'll be growing up and you'll wonder why you worried so much about it all.

Ah your baby sounds exactly the same as mine. Terrible napper and all attempts at bedtime fail. He is also 4 months. I was getting really stressed about bedtime so we've decided to leave it for a few weeks and try again when he seems more ready. Would love to get evenings back to ourselves but we get more of an evening with DS sat on our laps than constant trips back and forth to the bedroom.