Newborns and routine

[Millysaurus]

Hi,

I have a 4 week old son and whilst I know it's too early for a routine I am thinking forward.

At the moment we give him a bath, change him and feed him at 7ish and then try and put him down in his carrycot in the living room. My husband stays downstairs between 9-12 whilst I go to bed for some guaranteed sleep (if he wakes in this time he has a bottle of either expressed milk or formula - the rest of the time I am breastfeeding). At 12 he is brought upstairs, changed, put in his sleeping bag and fed and then down in the crib next to our bed. Obviously at the moment he wakes every few hours (sometimes every hour ) throughout the night.

When we want to initiate a bedtime how will this work when he is meant to sleep in the same room as us for 6 months? Do people go to bed at 7pm?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

My baby is 4.5 months now and no routine. I don’t think it’s possible to give one.
I was always told ‘rod for back’

He only used to go to sleep at 10pm when we did anyway and the thought of putting him down for 7 and just being awake for 3 hours, well we tried it and after 1 try it just felt frustrating.

So he was held until he fell asleep and if it happened to be 8pm he would wake up if our down before 10 anyway ! So we put him down when we went to bed, if he was asleep

Anyway at 2.5 months he started to sleep from 10-4, bottle at 4 then 5-7. Now it’s 5-8

So basically I get a while nights sleep without having to do anything. And it felt far less frustrating to go with him anyway

Sorry so that’s my story, are you saying he sleeps from 7 though?
If he’s asleep then Moses basket in the living room and you take it up with him in it when you go to bed.

I've got a 4.5 month old, his natural routine has always been late to bed late to rise (with wake ups obviously!)

We used to do similar to you but really want some evening time back now!

I'm trying to bring his bedtime forward. I do bath and feed at 6/7 and he usually drifts in and out of sleep until 9.30/10 ish. We put him in his cot in our room but we have a flat so we just keep checking him all the time and have the door open. We had a video monitor but he kept pulling at it and one night he had the wire in his mouth!

I go to bed 10.30/11 and I usually dream feed him, his next wake up is usually between 2-4am then again at 5/6am and he usually goes back to sleep till 8am.

By no means have we "cracked it" but slowly making progress I think.

Good luck!

I have a three month old. I noticed she starts so get grumpy and overtired at nine, so at 8 we do bath, boob, bed. She’s usually then asleep by 9 and tends to sleep through til 6ish. I think it’s luck more than anything. Some babies sleep. Some not so much

I dream of going to bed at 7pm! (And of a routine, but 3pm-midnight is currently prime cluster-feeding time for my six-week old. I'm so envious of your sleep!)

Our health visitor said it's fine to leave DD sleeping alone at 7pm and the same-room advice is "just for overnight", in complete contradiction to the NHS advice. We plan to ignore her!

If DD ever stops being a chaos demon long enough to implement a routine, I'll go to bed with her at 7 or 8 or 9pm – whatever the bedtime ends up being. I can survive without an evening for a while til she's 6 months; I'd rather have the sleep. Currently she'll only sleep on people or in her bedside crib, so sitting room carrycot not an option. When she does sleep in the evening, DP and I eat dinner in the bedroom with a Nigella-style food towel on the bed. It's not for very long in the scheme of things!

Any reason you wouldn't want to go to bed at 7pm if he's up every hour in the night?

At around 3.5 months I stopped going up to bed with her and instead put her down at 7 and then went upstairs to bed myself about 10. She kind of gradually moved towards that sleep time herself. However she's always been a good sleeper - she generally does 7-3 or 4, then down again till half 6/7. And those three hours in evenings are golden!

Strictly it doesn't follow guidelines but I don't really want to be going to bed at 7pm and sitting in a dark room making no noise for three hours every night. And I don't want her sleeping downstairs with us and having to be moved and woken up to be put into bed. I have to say I don't know anyone who has gone to bed at 7pm with their baby for the first six months and I don't think the never leaving them in a different room to sleep is very practical, but you have to do your own research and weigh things up.

However at 4 weeks we had zero routine and she just came up to bed with us when we went.

My HV also said it was fine to put them to bed and leave them until you go to bed yourself, and the guidelines were for overnight only. Not what I thought but hey. At the moment my daughter wont go down in her basket TIL 10-11 anyway...up till then she will sleep but only on us.

The only bit of advice I took from any advice book was the 7-7 routine. My DD would go down at 7pm, had feeds throughout the night as determined by her and obviously these changed and got less frequent as she got older and then no matter what I would set my alarm for 7am and we'd start the day.

I only have one child so maybe it was pure fluke that she could do this but I compare it to my sister and friends who had kids at the same time and for years complained they had no evenings to themselves as they were up with their babies.

The other thing that really worked for me was a dream feed. As I was going to bed at say 10ish, I'd scoop DD up, not wake her, give her a bottle, burp her and put her back down. That meant she was full up and hunger wouldn't wake her for a while longer.