Getting baby to bed earlier

[fuzzyllama]

At current Dd is 19 weeks old and going up to bed with us at 10pm. She is fed, usually falls asleep at breast, then dp takes her and rocks her for 15 mins before transferring to cot. She will sleep generally from 10.30pm until between 5.30 am and 7.30 am when I feed her in bed and she tends to drop off for a couple of hours if she woke up at 5.30 or an hour If later waking.

I have tried getting her to bed earlier, say starting routine at 8.30 pm, but this usually ends in crying, refusal to put down, later than usual bed time and night waking. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get her down earlier and wondering if necessary as she sleeps fairly well from 10pm bedtime routine ?

Commenting as I'm interested in seeing the answers; in a very similar situation to you OP and wondering whether I 'ought' to do something despite the fact it's all currently working well for us.

Tricky isn't it star, I'd just like to regain some of my evening back and make sure she's getting enough sleep! Out of interest how much does yours nap in the day ?

He seems to have come up with his own routine; a couple of two-hour naps and a quick half hour snooze in between - though currently all sleeping is either nose-to-boob or in the sling (which again I really am quite enjoying and see no need to 'fix' just yet... He's got years of sleeping alone ahead of him, no rush)

Mines the same, boob to sleep most of the time. My dd seems to nap more in the day than your ds. Sometimes her naps can amount to about 6 hours a day and I'm sure that's too much !

When ds was little and we wanted to start putting his bedtime back, we did it gradually so he didn't notice and the impact was minimal. Long process, but every week we took 15-30 mins off the routine time / bedtime. So if dd goes down for 10, try 9.30-9.45 and just slowly work back x

Thank you bing, think that seems the best way to approach it, did you find it affected night wakings through putting him to bed earlier ?

We had also been keeping our daughter with us until we went to bed at 10, but recently someone recommended a book on sleep to me. Book said babies need loads of sleep, and very early bedtimes to facilitate this. So last week I put DD 11 weeks to bed at 6pm when she seemed a bit drowsy (book said do not wait until they are overly tired, bed at the first sign of tiredness). Surprisingly she completely took to the early bedtime. Since that night, after being lulled to sleep usually by 7pm, she sleeps until 7am (waking twice for feeds). So perhaps try completely shaking things up with a very early, well-timed bedtime?

Bring it back 10-15mins every couple of nights. Make sure she's getting enough naps in the day. Gradually it will happen!

I will start to reduce it, seems the best bet! She gets plenty of naps, sometimes I think too much ! Her longest nap yesterday was from 4.30pm until 7.30pm. I usually find if she naps too late into the evening she doesn't sleep too well with several wakings

We didn't see a difference in night waking's as ds didn't really notice he was going to bed earlier! We did actually find that he needed the later nap to stop him from being over tired, but no more than about 40 mins.

Well, she's had her vaccinations today, tired as a result, and is currently in bed ! It's only been 20 minutes so I'm not holding my breath. Do you dream feed when you go to bed ? I don't know weather to or not? If not I will have to pump or wake up with boulders in the morning

Sorry llama, cant help with that as we never dream fed and he was on formula x

Thank you any way ! I think what I will do is leave her, and if she wakes up by us coming to bed, I will probably offer her a top up. She was full to the brim before going down, so she should be okay

Good luck x

My LO came up with us and co slept until we got her to sleep in the cot around 25/26 weeks.
I would say that from 21 weeks she went from napping/awake time in a 2hrly cycle all day to being much sleepier from 7pm onwards.
Once we started to put her in the cot bedtime became 2hrs after the last wake up as she's on 3 naps.
Really felt like we should've started putting her down at a younger age but took us a while to crack the cot and I refused to go to bed at 7!

How did it go?

She slept 8.30pm until 8.30am, waking once for a feed at 1am, couldn't have gone better. Can't help but feel it was because of the jabs and calpol though. But we are going to try and do the same this evening, hopefully with the same success!

I think ds was about 20 wks when he just started going to bed earlier, I followed his lead really. Prior to that it was a struggle to put him down, he would sleep in the bouncer downstairs until we went to bed. One day he was really cranky and ended up falling asleep on my on my bed at 6.30pm and we just carried on with that. He's never been a great sleeper or napper though and I would love the nights that you are having!

notta, know how you feel, DD would not sleep anywhere but in my arms for the first 9 weeks and it was beyond exhausting.