When did you start a sleep routine?

[Gobletoffire]

It’s probably wayyyy too early to be thinking about this, my DS is two weeks old. I am breastfeeding and he is cluster feeding throughout the night which is very exhausting. He sleeps in his crib next to me (or we Co sleep if he won’t settle) but I don’t take him up to bed until around 11pm because he has been feeding the most from around 10pm-2am so sleep is impossible during that time anyway. We have been managing to have good lie ins though, today we were asleep until 9:30am! At the moment should I just go with the flow and try and rest when he is as I have been doing? At what point do I start putting him to bed at a certain time every night and trying to get him into a routine? I’ve been trying to get him used to day/night by keeping him in the light in the day and interracting with him loads etc and then keeping lights low and quiet at night.

This does not work for everyone and I’m not an expert (plus mine was FF from the start so different) but from 6 weeks for us!

This is because from about 5 weeks she started being awake more in the day and asleep more at night (I always did no talking, no lights etc at night to differentiate between that and daytime). This led to her being desperate to sleep by about 6.30pm but being unable to in the living room; she’d just be nodding off when a cat would meow or my OH would cough and she’d wake up wailing because she was overtired but too stimulated to sleep.

We bought a video monitor and started bath, bottle and bed in her crib in our room by 6.30 and it has carried on ever since! Coincidientally, she started from then on sleeping an ever lengthening first stretch - first 6.30-10, then eventually 6.30-4.30, one feed then back down till 6.30. She’s now 4 months and self settles in her crib after her bottle every night (though now wakes up 2 or 3 times a night for a half an hour sing, flipping sleep regression 😂😂😂).

As I said, doesn’t work for everyone, all babies are different and it’s personal choice but has worked a treat for us. Warning though; I totally shot us in the foot with the whole day/night thing, as she loves bedtime but detests naps and fights them with every last drop of energy 😩

I started at 9 weeks - within 2 days, he went from crying until the early hours to dropping off to sleep peacefully in my arms within a few minutes.

You sound like you're doing well, establishing the difference between day and night and also looking after yourself! If you want to start a basic routine - giving her a bath and a song before you take her to bed for a feed, it can't hurt.

6 weeks ish, with a bath and a song at about the right time closest to a normal bedtime. Not routine as such but more sleep cues so that at some point she started to understand that these things happening = time to sleep.

Congratulations

(Though I suppose that is a routine... never mind.)

From birth.

Not until 8 months for mine, her bedtime gradually got earlier. Always did dark nights and light days though. I think at this stage I'd just prioritize getting what sleep you can.

We managed to establish a bath/feed/bed routine from about eight weeks and would have him asleep by 7-8pm every night.

It started with putting him down for a nap around 7pm from around six weeks, then we would do bath/feed/bed around 10pm and he would usually be down by midnight. That nap got longer and longer until he was sleeping 7-10pm more or less every evening. We shifted the bedtime routine to 6pm and that nap became part of his night sleep instead. It wasn’t planned but worked out really well!