Baby not sleeping until 12am

[crowka]

I'm a first time mum and my little boy is now 9 weeks. He is a cracker but won't go to sleep at night sometimes until 12am!

We do the same routine at 8pm every night and have done since he was 2 weeks old - bath, book with breastfeed and then into his Moses basket. But...... he won't settle and wakes for constant feeding until 10pm when he gets a bottle of formula and then still doesn't settle to sleep until 12am. He is fine from then until 9.30am - waking 3 times for a feed which is fine as he is still so young. He naps at midday for 2 hours and at 4.30pm for 2 hours.

How do we get him to sleep earlier? We are thinking of giving his bottle at 8 rather than 10 as it seems he is holding out for it or we are considering moving his bedtime earlier as he might be overtired?! The problem with that is we will both be working and getting home at 6.30pm so 8 is nice as we will get to see him.

Does anyone have any experience/advice? Thank you!

It's normal for a baby that age to have a very late bed time. It'll gradually get earlier as he gets older. You could wake him in the morning, this encourages an earlier bedtime. You would have to adjust nap times accordingly.

Evening cluster feeding are quite normal.

Baby having a proper "bedtime" starts around 6 months old ish. Until then, it's quite ok to just sit on the sofa letting baby feed and size on and off until you go to bed.

My DS was just like this, I think at this age it's very normal - we just tried not to worry and just went with it especially as he also woke up late at around 9.30-10ish so I didn't feel too sleep deprived. We stopped worrying about bedtime routine for a bit and just took advantage of it (went out to friends etc) and found over Xmas he just stayed up late with us. Now we've just reintroduced the bedtime routine (he's 5 months) and it's going much better - he goes down at 8ish and does wake a couple of times briefly but is generally properly asleep by 10.30 and doesn't wake again until 2ish. so sorry a long winded way of saying just go with it for now while he's still so little

Only 2 naps and that far apart seems like very little for such a tiny one. While late bedtimes is normal I'm guessing your little one is also overtired which makes it difficult to get them to drop off. I'd expect a baby that young to only stay awake for about 90 minutes before needing a nap. If you respond to the first signs of tiredness and get more naps in during the day he may settle better at night.

At that age DS2 stayed downstairs with us feeding (constantly!) and sleeping on my lap till I went to bed. 9 weeks is very young for any kind of routine. DS2 naturally started to fall asleep earlier at about 3/4 months.