Tell me about your 4/5 month old bedtime routine...

[Marghe87]

I keep reading the holy grail to achieve a good night sleep is ensuring baby is able to go to bed awake and drift off without being rocked or fed etc. I am sure there are babies that are able to do this but it definitely doesn’t seem to be my DD’s case as we have failed miserably every time we tried. Our current routine is: 6pm change into sleepsuit, quick massage with DH with relaxing music and dim lights, into sleeping bag, feed until asleep and then put in tbe cot. She is in the middle of a sleep regression I think and keeps waking up every 10-20 min after being put down. It’s exhausting.
I am considering changing tbe routine slightly so that feeding is not the final part of it but I really really struggle to see how on earth she will be able to fall asleep without bf.
What do you do? Can you share your routines and whether you put your child down awake or not (and also how does the night go?).

Ps: we also give her a bath every other day, just before the massage with DH.

In the same boat.. And I bloody hate the boat. Sleep has become an anxiety-ridden hell and I start to get panicky as evening approaches as I know how the night will go.

Our bedtime routine is very quick bath, quick massage, nappy on, into sleepsuit (all in dim lighting while listening to Disney lullabies on Spotify) However as soon as that sleepsuit goes on, my 4.5 month old DS flips, starts to cry and then it's game over. Its like he knows what the next bit is and goes into meltdown mode. We then put him into his sleeping bag (screaming), then a breastfeed, which used to be lovely and calm but is now trying to persuade him to feed through his screaming (mixed success) - in the last week its got to the point where we have to turn the lullabies off and put on the magic YouTube white noise video on full blast to get him to calm down enough to feed. Used to feed to fully asleep and then transfer into the bedside Snuzpod but we are now trying to put him down slightly more awake each time so he's aware he's being put in his crib. So trying to wind afterwards at which point he will usually cry a bit, then into the Snuzpod with his dummy and he will usually go off. But still think he's too sleepy to be fully aware because he's still waking up 457 times a night. And then fully awake from 4.30am until we give in and let him get up at 6 ish. All naps are on me (still doesn't go down without a fight) as if we put him down for them we only get 10/20 minutes. If he's on me I can stretch it to an hour but requires lightning quick reflexes to pat/jiggle if he starts to wake (which he does multiple times during a 1 hour nap)

Not keen on sleep training at all but I'm a tearful snappy mess all the time and starting to think it's going to have to be done because I don't know what else to do. We try shush/pat overnight but as the night goes on it seems to wind him up more.

Trouble with feeding to sleep and putting down is they're full of air. Might be why yours wakes a few mins later op. Make sure you joggle/squeeze some wind out before lying them down.
I don't try putting ours to bed before I go, however I will put her to sleep downstairs with some music in a rocking moses in the living room. I then have my evening around her and take her upstairs to put in beside crib. Usually I can put her in it with low lights, a dummy and a bit of Ewan white noise and she'll go back to sleep and wake up about 4am for a double feed, then back to sleep. Sometimes I feed her with me on my side, her sitting upright with her arm slung over me and we both drift back off at that point. Works quite nicely as her wind rises up in that position by itself usually.