how and what: bedtime routine

[Crazyone84]

I'm first time mum and have a 3 month old. Currently she falls asleep downstairs with us around 8.30pm, we take her up around 10/10.30 and give her a feed sleepy, put her into bed and after a few mins wriggling that's her till 7.30/8pm. I would like to start putting her up to bed as I feel we are disturbing her with noise (tv, cooking, general chatting). We have a monitor set up which we can see and hear, not a very big house either way.
What should we start to do?
Feed bath books bed
bath feed books and bed
no books?
Aim to get her into bed for 8.30?

Just looking for a bit of guidance on how to get off to a good start. We have been quite relaxed and let her set her own timings till now so happy to go along easily to her needs.

Make sure you have a breathing monitor but bear in mind that breathing monitors don't prevent SIDS, only alert you to it having happened. A lot of the time kids who've actually stopped breathing can't be made to start again, regardless of how soon you get there, so prevention (by keeping them in the room with you when they're asleep) is better than cure, but an early discovery still gives you more of a chance than a later one.

Also bear in mind that the 2-4 months old is the most likely time for SIDS deaths.

As for routines, whatever works for you.

As PP said, 2-4 months is peak time for sids, I really wouldn't put her to bed before you certainly before 4 months, especially since she is settling so well it seems to be working?? I know it's hard not having your evening, but it won't be forever, we started initiating more of a routine around 4/5 months but still having him on the sofa with us afterwards. We don't do bath because he has excema so doesn't have one everyday, we do feed, ready for bed, books (the same every night, sleep tight very hungry caterpillar is a lovely bedtime book and babies like the predictability) then rock to sleep downstairs and sleep on me until we went to bed at ten. Around 6 months I started rocking him in our room (his cot is sidecarred to our bed because his sleep has been awful since 4 months and wakes lots in the night) and then putting him in his cot around 8-8.30. It's lovely to have a few hours on an evening now but I wouldn't have been comfortable doing it before 6 months. X

What should we start to do?
Feed bath books bed
bath feed books and bed
no books?
Aim to get her into bed for 8.30?

At 3 months it's ok to establish the bedtime routine you want for the future. But then when putting down to sleep for "bedtime", it's downstairs.

Here's what I'd do:

• At any awake time between 6pm-8pm, call that "bedtime" (It doesn't need to be a strict time, just a window of time)
• During this early evening awake time, do your "bedtime routine". Mine would be:
• strip naked, have to naked floor time, including tummy time. No clothes/nappy makes movement practicing easier. Smiley giggle time with Mummy and Daddy.
• Bathtime
• Towel dry on my bed
• baby massage (It's nice bonding time)
• into night clothes
• downstairs and feed
• good, long winding cuddle with baby upright on my shoulder.
• Put down to sleep (downstairs)
• Take upstairs either when waking for 11pm (ish) feed or whenever I wanted to go to bed.

After 6 months

From 6 months everything stays the same, but the feed and winding happens in my bed, baby into the cot upstairs when a sleep and I come downstairs.

When consistantly sleeping through

Towel drying, into nightwear, feed and winding all happens in baby's own room, then put to sleep in there. I wouldn't move cot into own room until all night wakes have completely finished.

Once able to page turn

Motor skills for page turning comes around 12 months and means baby can actively engage in books. Previous to this we play with books in the daytime but not really at night. Once baby is engaging with the book them I either swap the baby massage for a story or keep the massage and add in an additional story.

My children have all kept that parentak read bedtime story until 11 years old and going into secondary school. In later years it became us reading our shared story and then child reading their own reading book. Into secondary school and the teenage years this became just the child reading own phone reading material in bed for half an hour before going to sleep.

Such is my plotted history of bedtime routines with four children currently aged 6-16

Agree with everyone else @Crazyone84 - keep her with you until 6months. DH and I have just decided to embrace it 😊 we go to bed as a family at 7.30pm with my DS 🤣

We do 6pm as the start of bedtime so it’s bath, dried, massage, into babygrow, feed, he then has half an hour of chill time either lying on his mat with a few toys or in his bouncer as he’s not usually quite ready for sleep yet. While one of us baths him, the other makes our dinner. And we eat during his chill time. We then go to our room and put him into sleeping bag, sit on my knee for a story (DS loves a story already!), then cuddles and kisses with either mummy or daddy until almost asleep then down into Snuzpod for the night. We then put white noise on and that keeps him asleep.

We then have our evening - sometimes watch a movie on the iPad (one headphone each - very romantic 🤣), use that time to order food shopping etc, or we’ll take it in turns to go and have a nice bath and chill while the other stays with DS. At 10.30/11 he usually stirs so we give him a sleepy feed then when he goes back down, that’s when we sleep.

He’s 5m just now. Once he’s over 6m we’ll do the same but we’ll leave him in our room in his proper cot with a monitor for the first part of the night. Our room is next to the livingroom. Our room and his room are in different floors so we’ll keep him in with us until he’s about 1 then move his cot to his room (if he’s sleeping through). At that stage DH and I might move to a spare room upstairs.

We did bath, BF, bed. If falling asleep on breast is not what you want then BF, bath, story, bed? Not sure about bottle assume the same! We put to bed at this age with a noise monitor, I don't think baby was high risk of SIDS, it's up to you to decide. I didn't have either 2 in with me all night till 6 months, they were big, grew out of Moses basket by 4 month and I had no room for a cot beside me, we also disturbed each others sleep...do what works for you. I'd put baby down at 7pm, would do a couple of night feeds and wake at about 7am. We did books during the day but at bedtime maybe didn't start till baby was really engaging with them although with second I'd be reading books to older child while BF.

I agree with PPs that it would be better to keep her with you until 6 months to mitigate the risk of SIDS. I’ve just embraced going upstairs in the early evening! We watch something on the laptop in bed until we are ready to go to sleep.

My routine with my 4 month old is to take him up to bed at around 7:00 for a bath. Then we do a bit of baby massage and some tummy time, then nappy and pyjamas, then feed. He usually drifts of to sleep while feeding and then we put him in his cot around 8pm and he mostly sleeps through.