How to start a bedtime routine?

[BBTOOC]

Just wondering if anyone could share their experience of starting up a bedtime routine with their LO?
Mine is now 14 weeks old and I definitely think it’s time to get the routine kick started, but not sure how to approach it!
For the last few days I have attempted a 7pm bath bottle book then bed routine but because she has had a nap at around 5.30 she isn’t quite sleepy yet and so lies in her cot wide awake for aaaages or sleeps for only an hour before waking up yet again.
Do I just persevere at this or is there a better approach?

Watching with interest as my LO is also 14 weeks and have started a similar routine for the past couple of nights, however she fell asleep at 4pm today and hasn’t woken up so have since put her straight to bed in her cot! Also not loving that it means DH and I have to stay in the bedroom once we’ve put her to bed at 7.30/8pm, what does everyone else do?

I think 14 weeks sounds a bit young, I recall HV saying baby should be in the same room as you until you go to bed until 6 months, so we’d have her in Moses basket in lounge til 10pm
im no expert I’ve had one amazing sleeper and one terrible one!
but what you are doing sounds spot on bath/books/bed

We use sleep associations rather than a set routine for my 17 week old and started in earnest about 13 weeks when the regression hit.

About 7pm we go upstairs and I turn a particular lullaby album on Spotify and dim
the lights. I change her nappy and give her a short massage, then put her into her sleeping bag, then a feed. When she’s ready to go down I switch to white noise and give her a dummy in her next to me cot. The white noise in particular knocks her out and she’s usually asleep within 5 minutes.

Some people do baths and books but keeping it super simple works for us.

We do leave her upstairs but have her on a monitor, plus I’m in bed by 9.30 or so!

Routine doesn’t have to be a convoluted 10-step performance, and a simple short one generally works better for young babies. Ours at 6 months is this: go downstairs to get changed into clean nappy and jammies, dad has a bit of rough play with baby, then I feed him to sleep and pop him into his cot.

We tried doing a book after changing into pjs for a few weeks but it just made him grumpy so we’ve dropped it.

Hi OP. We had a bedtime routine since our DD was a few weeks/couple of months old. It doesn't have to be long or a million steps or anything - just bath, bottle, cuddle then bed. We started at 9pm, so by the time we did everything, we were going to bed with her in our room anyway. We gradually worked back by half an hour (starting at 8.30, then 8pm, then 7.30 and finally 7pm). We started introducing a story when DD got a bit older as well.
Before she was 6 months and we were putting her down earlier (i.e. before our bedtime, but still in our room), we set up the baby monitor (just an indoor Ring camera) so we could have time to ourselves before going to bed, but still keeping an eye on her in her crib.
From 6 months, just kept the same routine, but putting her to bed in her cot in her own room. Still following that routine now and it works a treat! We have a starry projector light that we keep on in DD's room until we come up to bed in our room when we turn it off.

Hope that helps!

I’ve got a 6 month old and have been doing a bedtime routine since she was about 3 months. We do the same routine (story, ready for bed, feed etc), as in we do the same things in the same order, starting about 45mins before sleep time. At the stage though, we’re still working by wake windows, so the bedtime routine starts, say, an hour & half after she wakes up from her last nap, rather than being at a set time on the clock.

I found it works well to manage the daytime sleeps then the night ones just sort of roll on. Might not be for everyone, but I'd time wake periods.

From dc waking at 7am, or whatever time they woke, I'd let them be awake for 90mins, then by that point they've had a nappy change and a feed and I'd put them down for a sleep (on me, or in the buggy etc).

Then whatever time they woke, repeat with a 90mins window of awake. Repeat all day.

If they woke from about 5.30 onwards I'd do bedtime 90mins after that. If they woke at say 4pm, I'd do a quick 20mins nap at about 5.15/5.30 in a reliable sleep spot (bouncer chair for dc1, lay on playmat for dc2), woke them by 6pm then did 7.30 bedtime.

It lasted til about 6mo by which point the naps were starting to lengthen, so I'd be less bothered about wake windows and more bothered about fixed nap times - I'd do a 45mins nap at 9/9.30, as long a nap as they needed starting at about 12, then another 45mins at about 4.

Eventually, the 4pm one went, the lunch on got longer.

Managing the daytime sleep like this was purely with the goal of having them tired at 7/7.30pm.

We did a feed (no nappy change) at about 11pm, then eventually any wakes between 11pm and 7am stopped, and after a while, we stopped the 11pm too.