3 month old bed time routine

[Elhan]

Since 10 weeks I put a routine in place because she was waking in the night every 4 hours. So I started doing bottle, no playing, then warm bath, into pj's in dark room and cuddle for ten mins then self settle. Worked like a charm and she's continued to sleep through every single night without waking. With my baby it's definitely the bath that knocks her out. I've tried doing the bath first then the bottle, but the she's grouchy on the bath because of hunger then won't feed her bottle fully because she's knackered. But her bed time does change every day and she wakes different times because of this which is fine. But I'm wondering how do u get the bed time down to an earlier Time, by the time I've fed and bathed and bed it's like 11pm and then I have to go to bed so absolutely no evenings for myself. Does it just happen naturally the older they get and more milk they take etc?

How long does the bath and feed take? Forty minutes tops? So start the routine 20 minutes earlier or so each night.

How long does the baby sleep? If her bed time is 11pm she's not really "sleeping through the night" yet - which is completely fine, by the way, there's no reason the average 3 month old would be sleeping all night without waking. Every four hours is pretty normal/good among my NCT friends' babies at the moment.

3 months is very young still. When mine was 3 months she was still sleeping on my until I went to bed.

Can you not just start the bedtime routine 1 hour before you want her to bed? About 3 hours after her last nap probably?

She doesn't have a set bed time to be honest, she drinks 6oz every four hours, so her last bottle is sort of wherever it falls. Sometimes it's 8pm,sometimes 10:30. For example tonight she just had bottle at 18:30 but from past experience if I bath her now and do routine she won't settle as it just seems to be too early for her and she'll drift in and out until her next later bottle. After that she will sleep through until 8:30ish. The earliest bottle she's ever had had been 7:30 I think and asleep by 9. She slept til about 4:30 if I remember. I find it hard to move her routine forward at the moment because her bottle comes first, then the bath. If her bottle falls around 17:30, it's far too early to put her to bed so I have to wait until her 9pm bottle. I suppose then just accept it for time being and when she takes bigger bottles and just gets bigger it'll fall into place naturally? I would like to try and switch to Bath first then bottle in the future but Ive tried it a couple of times and it does not work for her

It sounds like you're making the gaps between bottles very precise? Could you be more responsive with the feeding, rather than going by the clock? Can you work from her hungry/tired cues?

We combi feed, so I'm sorry if I've misunderstood. But if you want to aim for a particular bedtime, can you not adjust the feeding times to reach it? As long as you do approx the right amount of milk each 24 hours.

It doesn't have to be precise - we aim for the bedtime routine to start between about 6.45 and 7.15, for a bedtime between 7.30 and 8, depending on when she gets hungry/sleepy.

That's pretty impressive feeding every 4 hours at 3 months. Are you feeding on demand or worked on this schedule?

What are you concerned about? She only needs feeding four hourly and she isn't even 3 months old: some babies ( 1/3 of mine ) are just like this or easy to feed etc and go for a long time between feeds. Luckily for me it was my first child b cause her brothers were VERY different. Btw DD was angelic but never stopped the 4 hourly waking and at nearly 30 is still the same!

I don't have a major concern now, I just wanted to know if the bed time routine naturally goes earlier the older they get. So right not it doesn't bother me at all, but in March when i go back to work it will bother me because I can't be going to bed at 11pm every night and her sleeping in til 8:30 if I have to get up for 6:30. I feed her every four hours because that's when she gets hungry, sometimes it's 3 and half hours sometimes she gone 5 hours if she's in her pram asleep, i don't follow a strict schedule it just sort of falls that way. Since she came home from the hospital she fed every three hours naturally, now its gone to 4 because she's on more milk per bottle

She's 13 weeks :)

We just picked a time for the last bottle of the day and stuck to it. Even if he had a bottle at 5 I’d just offer him another at 7 then put him in the bath (we also always have done bottle before bath) and then bedtime routine and bed etc. Obviously at 3 months he was still waking for night feeds but eventually he just went down to one bottle at about 1am and we gradually just pushed this back and back to 6am once I knew he was getting all he needed in the daytime.
Then at about 4.5 months he couldn’t stay awake past 6.30 so we changed his last bottle to 5.45pm and bed by 6.30. He has pretty consistently slept 6.30-6.30 since about 4.5 months Really. We worked on self settling at about 4 months.

I’d give his first bottle at 6.30am and last at 5.45pm and he got fed whenever he wanted in between, which he worked out himself to be about every 3 Hours.

Doesn’t work for everyone but worked for us. I’m militant about his routine 🤣

Gosh 11pm is so late! Our now 6 month old was going to bed by 7pm at 12/13 weeks so we had our evenings to ourselves (and still do!) We would dream feed at about 10pm and he'd have another feed at around 4/5. I'd say 11pm is a very late bedtime

I think the answer is probably no, the baby probably won't create their own consistent bedtime - that has to come from you.

Just offer a last feed between, say, 7-8pm each day and then a bath, aiming for an 8-8.30pm bedtime? See what happens.

I definitely wouldn't wait another whole four hours if one feed is a bit too soon for bedtime!

I'll try and adjust things and see what happens. I've tried the dream feed thing but she just wakes up fully and takes ages to settle. Thanks for all the advice :)

Are you keeping lights low, voices dim, after 7pm? And waking up with bright lights and noise and curtains open at 7am? This helps set their circadian rhythm. Start treating everything after 7pm (or whenever you want bedtime to be) as night – all bottles, naps, etc, in the dark. Even if you end up doing bath and book later.

But honestly, 13 weeks is tiny – if you read the sleep board archives you'll see loads of babies going to bed late at that age, and it does naturally get earlier. It's a bit of both, really: the baby's sleep pattern and day/night rhythms maturing, and you responding to that and moving the routine earlier until it all settles.

Really wouldn't worry about bedtime staying this late until March! It will sort itself out. Can't help on the feeding issue, could you feed on demand?

So gave last bottle tonight at 7:30pm,just sort of fell that way. Bath, dressed in dim room and drowsy into cot. It takes a good 30-45mins to settle her to sleep as she is reliant on a dummy and it falls out so she cries for it to be put back in. I'll deal with that issue in a few months lol!

@Abouttimemum can I ask how you worked on self settling at 4 months? My baby is 14 weeks and can't self settle at all. Once in a blue moon he can fall asleep from "drowsy but awake"

@Hazzy135 Yeah sure thing.
So my boy was in special care for 6 weeks after birth and then we couldn’t put him down for about 6 weeks while we got silent reflux medicated so he was about 12 weeks before we started trying to put together a routine for him. Prior to this we couldn’t even put him down flat.
So we worked on that first of all and then once he could do a few hour stretches we started taking him upstairs for ‘bedtime’ (he’d always been downstairs prior to that) which started off at about 7-7.30pm but once we realised he was overtired we moved it to 6.30pm.
Anyway was total nonsense to start with so we gave last feed of the day at 5.45pm then bath then get dressed, creams etc the quick cuddle and love you and then down in his cot, sit next to him and pat him etc took about 2 hours first night, only picked him back out if he cried hysterically, quick cuddle then back down. Went to sleep eventually. First night I think he slept for like an hour and then he was awake again lol, rinse repeat the process.
After a few nights he seemed to get it and started settling really quickly and sleeping for longer stretches. After a week he gave a little wimper then was asleep, at 4 months he still woke at about midnight and 4am for feeds. After a couple of weeks the midnight feed Started becoming 1am/2am so dropped to one feed with another at 6.30am. Then once that middle of the night feed became a 4am/5am feed we started pushing it back and back until eventually we wouldn’t feed him until 6.30am if he woke. All in all took a few weeks but by 4.5 months I’d say he was pretty solidly sleeping 6.30-6.30. I’ve never dream fed.
He’s 8.5 months now and has a 5 minute whinge and nods off.
He had a week-long regression at 4 months corrected (he’s prem) and was poorly last week so needed some cuddles in the night but all in all we stick to the routine and he goes back to normal soon enough.
I couldn’t have done it all without my husband.
I’ll also say that he is actually a very light sleeper and his room has to be pitch black with no noise for him to get off to sleep which is contrary to all of the advice we were given about white noise etc and weird given he spent the first 6 weeks of his life on a noisy hospital ward.
Also we put him in his cot for most daytime naps when we were doing this as well with the same routine (bar bath) to help him with being able to regularly self settle more quickly. He will still nap anywhere generally though but if I’m in the house it’s in his cot.
There’s people who say they need to be kept with you for the first 6 months etc but we were doing more harm than good keeping him with us downstairs and he has a nappy breathing monitor and video monitor so was totally safe.
Anyway that was an essay and I probs missed stuff!!

@Abouttimemum
Thank you. That's great! We put him upstairs in a dark room too for naps and night but we do have white noise! Currently rocking to sleep though and he often wakes up after 20 minutes- half an hour numerous times before he's down for a good stretch! He's currently going through the regression I think too and we're up about 6 times at least in the night! X