Bedtime routine for toddler & baby

[KCpip]

Hi,
Just wondering if anyone has experience of putting a toddler and baby to bed and what your routine is?
Our toddler (2.5yrs) is a great sleeper. After bath, stories we put her in her cot and she settles herself off to sleep between 7.30-8.00 every night. Obviously we took a bit of time in the early days getting to this point but generally she’s always been a good napper and night sleeper.
Our 2nd daughter is 2 months old and I can’t get my head around how to give her a bedtime routine while also getting our toddler to bed. At the moment she hasn’t got any structure to her bedtime and it varies lots. I know it’s still early days but just trying to figure out - what time should she go to bed? Should we fit it around my older child or 1 bedtime followed by next ones bedtime? I can’t remember what time we used to do everything with baby at this age and am paranoid we’ll never set a good pattern for her like we did for her sister.
Any thoughts, suggestions, experiences appreciated!
Normally both myself and my husband are here but there are nights I’ll need to settle them both.

I’m in the same situation so following with interest...

I would keep the toddlers bedtime as it is and have the baby in with me when I go to bed (10-11ish). Just while baby is in a routine and sleeping through. Then once you are sure baby will sleep from 8pm (like the toddler) until morning they can do bedtime together.

I have a 5 yo & 14 weeker. I bath them together (every other night) at 6pm then story in DC1s bed at 6.30 while I feed DC2... multitasking at its best.

Lights out at 7pm and DC2 feeds to sleep. I'm then taking the baby back downstairs with me to sleep until I go to bed but eventually he'll go in his cot at 7.

It's taken me almost 3 months to work this out btw... tried it every other way but this works best for us. DH works away so I do it on my own 4 nights a week.

My dc are a bit older now, (11,9 and 7) but in the early days our toddler had a similar routine to yours, tea at 5, bath at 6, stories and then bed around 7. When the baby came along, they started their bath together, with me drying and dressing the baby in the bathroom while supervising a longer bath time for the toddler and then I would feed the baby while doing stories for the toddler. Bed for the toddler and then either take the baby downstairs with me or once they started to go to sleep at that time, put them down in their basket wherever.

I spent a lot of evenings doing bed time on my own as dh worked shifts, so the routine had to be doable if I was on my own or if we did it together.

Thanks for your replies. I’m really impressed with all the multi-tasking! Baby is still quite grisly in the evening so I’ve been deliberately trying to have story time alone with toddler while husband is with baby but I know at some point it all needs to intertwine a bit better. Hopefully when she’s big enough to sit up in the bath that will help with shared bath time too. Sometimes it feels like so much to do at the end of a busy day doesn’t it?! But I know DD1 having a good structured routine must have helped with how well she sleeps so determined to figure something out soon.

dontgetowtfernowt how do you read a story while feeding? Don’t know how I’d be able to have DC1 see the pictures. I breastfeed.

dontgetowtfernowt how do you read a story while feeding? Don’t know how I’d be able to have DC1 see the pictures. I breastfeed.

@eeanne DC1 has a single bed so she's in first, baby on his left hand side lying down in the middle, me on my right hand side lying down feeding & book held up high.

I feel I need to do a diagram with this being mumsnet but my drawing skills are non existent!

If your OH is around then you do the baby's bedtime and he does toddler's? Ours are 2 and 4 now and we often still do a child each at bedtime.