Nightmare bedtimes for 13 week old - what am I doing wrong?

[sunnyfields25]

Hi folks. Bedtime has become quite a stressful, upsetting event in our house, and I'm hoping that if I describe the usual situation, someone might be able to suggest where I'm going wrong. I'm finding it difficult to take a step back and get a clear overview. Sorry if this is a long post...

DS is nearly 13 weeks old. For the past few weeks we have been doing a bedtime routine of BF, bath, BF, crib. The crib is upstairs but we have a video monitor and check on him every 5-10 minutes. We have had an occasional evening where we do the whole routine and put him down to sleep without any tears. Just give him his dummy, have several re-insertions, then he's asleep in less than 30 minutes. But that doesn't happen very often. The norm is for him to start crying towards the end of the routine (normally after getting out the bath), cry while getting dressed, feed, then cry as soon as he's put down in crib. There can then be an hour or more of trying to settle interspersed with crying. DH and I are happy to hold him for a bit to settle him, and I would never leave him to cry, but we'd like him to be able to fall asleep with us right next to him soothing him, rather than in our arms, as we were getting into the dangerous situation of DH and I nodding off to sleep while holding DS.

DS generally settles quite well during the day. He has daytime naps downstairs in his Sleepyhead (with dummy), or if we're out and about he sleeps in his car seat or pram. He tends to have long naps in the morning but they dwindle as the day goes on. Sometimes on a bad day I'll have to put him in a carrier to ensure he gets some sleep. But in his Sleepyhead he will happily nod off while sucking on his dummy. He doesn't seem to care whether I'm there or not (but I loiter nearby to keep putting dummy back in when he accidentally drops it). I'm mentioning this because his daytime sleep is so wildly different to his bedtime sleep. You'd think it was a different baby. Daytime naps = happy with no tears. Bedtime sleep = unsettled with lots of crying.

So.... I need to figure out what we're doing wrong at bedtime. It happens at a different time every night, because we basically start the routine whenever DS wakes up from his final nap of the day and it's somewhere in the region of bedtime. So for example last night it was 6.15pm, but on other occasions it has been 7.45pm. It has seemed to work best when we've been putting him to bed at about 8.30pm, and I do wonder if we're sometimes trying to put him to bed too soon. I am more than happy to let DS dictate his bedtime, but in practical terms I'm not sure how to do that. If he wakes up at 6.15pm, and we treat that as another awake period followed by just a nap, then bedtime would be ridiculously late.

Once DS has finally gone to sleep I normally do a dreamfeed between 10.30 and 11pm. Not sure if that's the right thing to be doing as he's quite squirmy afterwards and occasionally wakes up, but once back asleep he does then tend to last until 6-7am.

I just want to make bedtime a nice, pleasant experience for him, and hate the fact that at the moment there are so many tears. It would also be great to get a little bit of evening back so that DH and I have time to eat our tea and have a bath ourselves!

Sorry once again for the rambling post. Any comments/suggestions greatly appreciated

I am in a minority but I think 13 weeks is an entirely appropriate age to have the baby on a routine. I think your DS may be going to bed too early after his last nap of the day. You can try and shift the bed time to see which slot works best.

When my DD was 13 weeks, we made sure she wakes up from her last nap by 5pm. We then put her to bed at 6.45-7pm. Starting from the end of week 12, she slept in the cot in her own room which I was comfortable with (SIDS risk goes down at 11 weeks and drops substantially at 16 weeks ). Having baby in a separate room (without other risk factors) based on underlying research is as risky as "safe" co-sleeping - it is all about deciding what works for your family.

We also followed a nap routine during the day and we did a dream feed at around 11pm. We moved it to 10.30pm when DD was slightly older.

Of course, you do not have to have a routine if you do not feel like it. It is absolutely fine to play it by ear every day but if you like predictability and schedule, there is nothing wrong with it either. For me following the routine was easier. Of course, there were days when things went off schedule and it was absolutely fine too. I knew I could get my DD back on her usual routine when it was needed.

Further to what I've said above, he's not too young to go to bed before you, I have 7 other new mummy friends with the same age babies and I was the last to put her to bed before us so if you want to carry on then do, you don't need a rethink on this.

Our baby goes to bed around 8.30pm (takes a while for her to nod off sometimes, sometimes it doesn't). Before that she stayed up with us....do you know how amazing it is to get that evening time back? My baby is only about 4 weeks older than yours and we've been doing bed time for about 6 weeks now.

Oh and we don't have a bedtime routine per se, I bath her in the morning (too much stimulation for my baby but it makes some babies sleepy!), it's a case of fed, burped, change, bedroom.

Ps forgot to mention I mainly do the bedtime early as I need me time back....!! I need to be an adult, I need to watch tv and read uninterrupted!

Are you sure baby will wake when you go up? We would carry ours in her sleepyhead and tiptoe and avoid all the creaky floorboards we would put white noise in in the bedroom and then lay the sleepyhead in the cot. Usually worked for us. At 6 months there's no chance! Hehe x

Those who recommend not having a bedtime - have you not read the OP's post? She was asking for suggestions about how to maintain the routine she has put in place very successfully, without her LO getting upset. How unhelpful to tell the OP to undo all the comforting routine she has given her DS!

Her DS has been sleeping well all night following a bedtime, so is clearly not "too young" for this. He is used to sleeping in a room on his own, not having his evenings disturbed by light and noise downstairs. The OP values her evenings with her DH.

I get that some people feel pressured to have a routine and that's not helpful; it's also not helpful to pressure people away from routines because of some unfounded notion of what their baby "needs". Only you know what's best for your baby OP - don't let people tell you what's "normal" if it doesn't work for your family.

I think most people's responses about baby being too young for a routine were to ease any insecurities OP had about getting a routine in place for the long run - I know at first I was obsessed with the idea of getting a routine sorted due to pressures from books/websites/HV but once someone assured me it all works itself out I was relieved and went with the flow I don't think anyone meant any harm.

Hi OP, we did the same as you but FF not BF, we stopped the evening bath too and also use white noise (her monitor plays it) of heartbeat, she has always settled really well. I would personally continue to keep him upstairs as good for him to be undisturbed and the 2 of you to get some alone time. We also had her in a grosnug swaddle sleeping bag.
Another thing is we didn't let her nap after 5pm as that would affect her bedtime

PS we started her in a routine at 10 days old and she's done brilliant with it, no sleep regressions etc which i think may be helped by the routine as she knows her meal times and bedtime, granted the feeds wont be as easy for you guys being BF as i understand baby feeds when he needs to.
She slept in her cot from day 1 in our room for all (at home) naps and bedtime, moved her to her room at 6m old.
Is there no way you can squash the sleephead in the crib or try and replicate it using blankets rolled up? Just so he has that slight pressure on his arms like a hug.

"Her DS has been sleeping well all night following a bedtime, so is clearly not "too young" for this. He is used to sleeping in a room on his own, not having his evenings disturbed by light and noise downstairs. The OP values her evenings with her DH"

The problem with that is that he is too young to be in a room on his own. And that bedtime isn't working- that's why the OP posted!

The problem with that is that he is too young to be in a room on his own.

There is research showing that having a baby in a separate room increases the risk of SIDS but (1) the 6 month cut off recommended by Lullaby Trust is a matter of judgment - every parent can review the SIDS statistics and make his/her own choice (bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/e002299.full#F1) and (2) all sleep related decisions are always a trade off. "Sale" co-sleeping is not safe either but sometimes it is the only solution that allows the parents and the baby to get any sleep.

And that bedtime isn't working- that's why the OP posted!

The bedtime may not work because of late naps. A more sustainable long-term solution would be to adjust nap schedule.

I have recently come across an interesting comment made a medical professional that babies normally start settling on a routine at the same time as they learn to smile. It was definitely true for my DD. It was not a full routine but DD got aware of nights and days and started recognising sleep signals when she began smiling to people.

You're doing nothing wrong. 13 week olds often simply don't do bedtime, routine or otherwise. My 3 have typically been up and down non stop from bedtime until midnight or so and then would go into better sleep until about 6 months. Routine or no routine. And a routine can be as simple as bottle in quiet room and straight into cot. No need for an hour long of bath, bottle, story, rocking in arms in a darkened room for 20mins then down etc. Mine have all become excellent sleepers from about 7mths on when their awareness and recognition of their environment is better and I could communicate a little with them.

For a bf baby, I think it's folly to expect a routine to be developed at 13 weeks. Your milk constantly changes in its "formulation", your baby may have been receiving enough cream/water/whatever it was he needed during the first few weeks, so he could sleep right through, but now the formulation has changed and he is waking up more often because he's asking you to feed him again, for good reason.

It is normal for a sleepy newborn to become torturously wakeful as they near 4 months of age. They become wakeful for a reason - they need more milk.

Be very careful about building your expectations around ideas that generally only work for ff babies, who receive the same "formulation" day in day out until they are weaned.

Beyond the milk part of things, from a cognitive development angle, a 13 week old baby needs to be held pretty much constantly. There are people whose babies are less fussy, and will tolerate being left in a crib at that age - but again, don't build your expectations around the exceptions to the rule. An infant primate requires holding. Pretty much all the time. I would say until they are sitting up, at least, if not later. Remember until they sit up a bit, they aren't even able to get their own burps out of their bodies! They need to be held and they thrive on being held

Not a popular answer, because holding a baby for 5-6 months straight is hell on earth, but unluckily that doesn't make it any less true.

Sleep training/ expectations of sleeping through the night are not going to fit with a baby under 6 months old. Older than that if baby was premature or even slightly preterm.

I think this so totally depends on the baby. Routines can and do work for some EBF babies - I know because mine is one of them. But it won't always be 100% reliable; for example, during growth spurts he will need to feed more and this can lead to an extra night waking or a couple of long feeding sessions in the evening. But if the structure is there then we've found interruptions to be short and our DS is soon back to normal.

At 12/13 weeks he was taking his first chunk of night sleep (approx 7pm to 10pm dreamfeed) in his pram bassinet beside our sofa. We did feed, bath, change, feed and then either rocking to sleep or sometimes he just fell asleep feeding. When he outgrew the bassinet (tall boy and a flailer!) we made him a nest on the sofa - you could use the Sleepyhead? - and he snoozed beside us. Either way, we could keep an eye on him, settle as necessary, but still enjoy an evening together. We kept the light dimmed a bit but watched TV etc as normal. Once asleep, he was a deep sleeper. Alas at 17-18 weeks his sleep got much more easily disturbed so he's having to be in a dark quiet room by himself but you might be ok for a while downstairs yet.

After the dreamfeed, he sleeps (and has always slept, bar growth spurts/ teething pains) very happily in his cot in our bedroom with usually one night waking up to 17 weeks when he started sleeping through from dreamfeed to morning. One thing I'd say is that having a consistent get-up time in the morning, e.g. 7am, helps to make the awake/nap times in the day more predictable. Don't give up on the routine yet if it's working for you. Just be flexible and experiment a bit to see what bedtimes/ pre-bed activities work for you and your baby.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I realise there are some conflicting opinions, but even so I appreciate people taking the time to offer their advice. Sorry I haven't got time to respond to all the replies individually.

Update - the past two nights we have scrapped the evening bath (in case it was too stimulating) and have put the Sleepyhead in the crib (only just discovered it actually fits in there!). Unfortunately neither of these have made any difference, and there have still been lots of tears as we get into evening.

I really don't think that it's putting DS in the crib that's the problem. This is because he gets agitated and starts crying way before we get to that stage (usually from the last feed of the evening onwards). He's generally very irritable in the evenings, even if we hold him and rock him to sleep. We did this yesterday, despite wanting to avoid that for reasons already mentioned, and it didn't reduce the crying at all.

All I can think is that he's overtired in the evening, but I'm not quite sure how to fix that. His naps dwindle as the day goes on. The past two days he's woken from a nap at 5ish but that has seemed way too early to begin bedtime routine. If that was his last feed of the day I don't think he'd last 5 hours to the dream feed. So instead we try to get him to have a further short nap after feeding (which can only happen if we hold him, and even then it only lasts 30 mins), but he still seems to be tired when he wakes up and we start getting him ready for bed. Not sure if we're going wrong somewhere here with the timings?

Sorry if this is long and rambly. The last two nights have been bad so I'm functioning on not much sleep as well as a suspected blocked milk duct (but that's a whole other story!). I think our good run of 6/7am wake-ups has finished as DS is now waking at 4am, and last night at 3am.

I've realised I spend my days dreading the evening because it's horrible having DS so upset and not knowing what we're doing wrong. It's really getting me down. He's so happy during the day, but turns into a different baby in the evening. And even cuddles and rocking to sleep don't stop the tears!

PS I should have mentioned, in case it's of use, although we have no set nap times during day, and no set bed time, DS generally needs to be asleep 1.5 hours after last waking. So whenever he wakes we always do feed, wind, change nappy, playtime. And then settle for nap when he starts rubbing his eyes and yawning (normally just over an hour after waking). This all goes out the window in the evening though as I find it impossible to read his sleep cues - he just seems to be permanently agitated!

Oh OP poor you!

I haven't got anything else useful to suggest. It sounds like you're doing an amazing job. Whatever is causing the evening agitation I'm sure your DS will come through it soon and get back to his long sleeps.

He's generally very irritable in the evenings, even if we hold him and rock him to sleep. We did this yesterday, despite wanting to avoid that for reasons already mentioned, and it didn't reduce the crying at all.

He's behaving normally really. They're often miserable at that time of day. Do whatever you need to do to get through the crying - if it makes you feel better to hold him through it, do that. If you need a break, use the crib.

It's really important to remember your job isn't necessarily to stop him from crying... it's just to love him. And you are doing that. You are going to be OK, this stage will pass.

All I can think is that he's overtired in the evening

I can almost promise you, the issue isn't overtiredness, it's probably just the fact that he is a baby. They're awful at everything at that age! They can't move themselves around, they can't get their own farts and burps out, they get reflux and can't make it go away or tell anyone, their brains are stimulated more and more as they grow, they have no control or context and are often mentally exhausted just by wondering wtf is going on from one moment to the next.

Sometimes they just need a good cry. It's awful though, I know. For me, holding my DC (usually jiggling them) at least made me feel I was doing something.

As long as his temp is ok, he's eating, and he's filling the right number of nappies, you can just love him through his crying.

You are showing a lot of courage during a difficult time, well done being a good mum.

He's generally very irritable in the evenings, even if we hold him and rock him to sleep

Feed him

Literally for a few hours. When he starts grumbling early evening, park yourself on the sofa with baby on your lap and nipple on baby's mouth. Let him feed and doze until no longer agitated. It might be a couple of hours, it may be 4 hours, it may be just an hour.

Google evening cluster feeding. That is what this is.

I think 13 weeks is about when I started getting dd into a routine, I followed roughly Gina Ford which worked well for us (I know most people on mn hate her but for me she was a sanity saver!!)

I would def not encourage any napping past 5pm and aim for bedtime to be about 7pm, personally I liked having the structure of bath time followed by milk and cuddles. Dd also needed some time on her own to settle, too much interaction was over stimulating.

Routines for me gave me a sense of having some control, I also felt like dds needs were anticipated and met so she never had to get herself into a state of demanding a feed or getting completely over tired. I get that everyone has their own way of doing things though and that routines need to be flexible so that your life isn't completely dictated!!

The best bit of advice I could give you is to stop overthinking and worrying about bad habits when he is still so little. My DS is now 8 months old but at 13 weeks, cluster fed at night like crazy. He slept on me on and off whilst breast feeding/comforting on the couch and then came to bed when we did and slept in a snuzpod attached to my bed. Then he went through another phase of not going down for the night until after midnight (anything before was a nap and he would wake after half hour needing fed again) and then after that would only sleep with me holding his hand through the snuzpod when he woke himself up. And then after that a phase of needing rocked to sleep when hand holding stopped working! I went through many a worry about how he wasn't self soothing, needing to hold my hand, being fed to sleep, only sleeping when in his sleepyhead, having a dummy, the rocking etc etc etc. He outgrew most of this on his own to be honest. And now he goes down after a bottle in his own room/bed without the sleepyhead and sends himself to sleep after 5 minutes of babbling to himself, sticks his dummy in himself and off he goes (don't get me wrong we still have odd bad nights where he needs a cuddle). We didn't follow any theories, or strategies it kinda just happened on its own tbh. We did establish the bath then bottle in dark room and then bed routine around 5 months as the TV in our bedroom was starting to distract him when we all went up together. Started at 10pm and kept being it forward and now he is asleep by 7. I think at that age you just need to do whatever to make life easy for you - always remember being told that self soothing will come on its own eventually for all babies and how you don't see any adults in the world who can't fall asleep without being rocked or needing a bottle of milk!

Thank you missymousey and thestamp for your kind replies - they made me feel a lot better about things

FATEdestiny we have been through a cluster feeding phase previously but I'm not sure that's the issue any more, as DS doesn't seem very interested until a couple of hours have passed since his last feed. I have tried offering, but he tends to suck for a minute and then as soon as the milk starts coming out he pulls away. I always offer him another feed after his bath, but it's more out of habit really as he's never interested, because he's just had a feed before his bath.

Girliefriendlikesflowers - I'm definitely one for routines and structure But yes you're totally right that there needs to be flexibility. No napping after 5pm sounds very sensible, we're just struggling to achieve that at the moment given that DS starts to get tired after an hour of being awake (so bedtime would be ridiculously early - nearer to 6pm). I'm hoping as he gets a bit older and can stay awake for longer, that will be more achievable.

NewMummy579 - Thanks, yes I think it is easy to get hung up on the fear of bad habits forming. I'm not dead against rocking DS to sleep, it's more that I have a bad back and am terrified of falling asleep while holding him. I'm all for him leading the way though and letting him show us what pattern he wants to follow.

Well, last night we went back to giving him a bath because we concluded it wasn't making any difference to how settled/unsettled he was. DS was actually really happy for the whole of the bath and even having his vest put on afterwards (which normally induces tears!). He grumbled a bit when the Grobag went on, but nothing too bad. He was happy after I'd offered him food (even though he didn't really take much) and was laid on my knee happily babbling away, albeit with increasingly jerky arm movements (I should have paid attention to that!). Then all of a sudden the crying started. Nothing had changed, it just came out of nowhere, and lasted for an hour! Normally when he does the babbling I just think to myself 'aw that's cute' and let him carry on. But I've noticed he does it increasingly towards the end of an hour since he woke up, and I'm now thinking it's actually a sign that he's overtired. That plus the jerky movements anyway. I think tonight I'll aim to pop him in his Sleepyhead before we get to the increased babbling stage and see if it makes any difference.

Sorry to ramble, yet again! It just helps to get this all written down and out in the open, even if no-one reads it

Sounds like a plan to me. Good luck for tonight!

@sunnyfields25 although it's easier said than done, don't panic. DD is almost 13 weeks and sleep has been rubbish for the past week or so. Day time naps have been better but she does an additional night wake up. My NCT friends have also been struggling around this time. Is he in a leap or having a growth spurt?

We have a routine at night - we like it, she likes it. During the day we do eat/play/sleep using a combination of predicting her awake times and going by her cues. DS sleeps in her sleepyhead in our room at bed time. She sleeps better that way and we have a monitor etc.

We found baths too stimulating and overtiring so don't do them before bed. We do find Ewan useful, and the dummy has been very helpful too. Might help if she sucks but doesn't want food?

Hope you've had a better night!