Bedtime

[Rba2022]

Hi all, hope everyone is well. What is an appropriate bedtime for a 3 month old? And do they sleep for longer stretches? Can i put my 3 month old to bed at 9pm. Lately he has been sleeping at random times im not sure why.

Whenever suits your family! What's important is that they get enough sleep in a day, not when that sleep happens. My boy is 4.5 months and at 3 months was still going to bed around 10pm. It's gradually crept earlier as he doesn't nap as often, so we now start bedtime around 7.30-8pm with the aim of getting him to sleep by 8.30-9pm. It's just something that happened organically.

He was sleeping longer stretches at 3 months but then the 4 month regression hit and we're up a million times a night again, so don't stress about longer sleep until after the regression!

When ours was that sort of age we noticed he was mostly sleepy late afternoon/ early evening. Over time this sort of morphed to a 7pm bed time. However if I had my time again I would've made bed time later. Preserve the longest sleep for when you need to be asleep. Follow wake windows and wake him up from naps if necessary to adjust his body clock.

@LGBirmingham How long were the wake windows and how long would you allow them to nap at 3 months?

@trrk Gosh I can't remember really! I think I just established through trial and error how long his wake window was. Maybe like 1.5hrs at that age? He was on three naps, I would need to resettle though, and bed at 7. I think I should have persisted with 4 though probably and later bedtime, during his brief spell of sleeping OKish at night at that sort of age he was regularly up at 5am.

His wake windows usually fell within what Lyndsey Hookway suggested was average in her book. So that's probably a good place to start if you have no idea. I know my ds wouldn't just fall asleep when he was tired so I know from experience it can be very hard to get them at just the right point before they are a screaming mess.

Thanks for the tips! 90 min seems about right for wake windows. We have definitely ended up at the screaming mess stage a few times recently and trying to work out how to avoid it as well as establish a bit more of a bedtime routine. Our LO is also almost 3 months like the OP and is currently going down any time between 8 and 11pm with 1-2 feeds during the night.