When to change bedtime routine

[riddles26]

My daughter is almost 7 months and we currently follow the routine of massage - bath - breastfeed and sleep which we have been doing since she was 2-3 weeks and works brilliantly.

I wanted to know at what age do most people stop giving babies massages? I love massaging her every evening and am in no rush to stop (although she is getting more determined to wriggle and roll away from me now so I imagine it will get harder and harder as time goes on).

Also when do you introduce a bedtime story? Do you do the same story every night?

I never did massage so can't answer that question but we replaced bedtime bottle with bedtime story sometime just after DD was 1, maybe nearly 1.5. Seemed to work quite well.

Don't do same one every night but I have a pile of books I save for bedtime that don't get used for anything else. I use the fairy tale ones you can get in M&S for about £3 or £4.

I did massages when young, probably until about 5 months. Its nice for bonding and cuddle-time, if nothing else. We stopped when upstairs early-evening bedtime started (as opposed to bath, massage, back down stairs for nap when young) so it became feed, PJs, sidecar cot snuggle until asleep.

Books started as play objects, mainly in the daytime, from around 12 months. Page turning, pictures, occassionally reading simple stories. No bedtime story at that age though.

Bedtime story has happened in our house throughout (with my 7 year old and his older siblings before him), but youngest didn't join this when tiny. She started her involvement in bedtime story (jointly with her brother) from about 18 months old.

I can't understand the reason of the same book being read over and over again - how can that foster a love of books and literature? Must be highly boring to both read and listen to.

After 4 children and over a decade of buying books, we've probably got about 100+ toddler-friendly short books in DDs bookcase. Part of bedtime routine is someone choosing the book (mostly the toddler, sometimes the 7 year old, sometimes me or DH).

We usually have runs with favoured books, whereby the same book is read for several days on in the bounce. And the same 20-ish books are most often read at any given time, since they are favourites. But we often shake it up and favourite books change*

*except Bear Snores On, which will forever and always be my favourite toddler book.

Thanks so much for your replies. I will continue as I am until she is a year old. We do have some basic baby books (soft and pop up) that we use in playtime already that she really enjoys but they are used to stimulate her right now rather than wind down time so am happy to keep it that way for another 6 months.

Am delighted that neither of you suggested to have the same book every night as I was thinking it would get very boring but something I read recommended that for bedtime - going to ignore that and go with your advice :)