What age should I start putting her to bed rather than letting her stay up with us?

[MollyMonkey]

Ihave a DD who is 9 weeks old. At the moment she stays downstairs with us until we go to bed, sometimes awake sometines asleep on sofa. I take her up and put her in crib by the side of our bed and she always goes to sleep - even if she is wide awake. I'm happy with this but worried I am creating a monster who will not want to go to bed at a "normal" time in the future. I am happy with how things are at the moment because it's easy and I don't worry about her because I can see she is ok (rather than upstairs out of sight) but I don't want months of problems in the future where me and DH spend entire evenings trying to settle her. Any advice welcome!

Please don't worry about creating habits - far too early for that!

DS stayed up with us until he was about 4 months old - when I say 'up' he was usually asleep but in the lounge with us either in his moses basket or on a beanbag. Neither me or DH felt ready to put him to bed unless we were there before then - when we did do it, we had no problems and it was actually nice to get our evenings to ourselves back again tbh (I realise it is hard to think that at the moment but it is true )

agree with ceebee - don't worry about it for the moment. We used to keep the DSs downstairs until about 5-6 months IIRC. The fact that I', not sure shows that it can't have been too aful and didn't go on for too long! DS3 is 12m now and goes to bed at proper bedtime with the other 2

I was the same as ceebee, kept my DS (now 2.5) in moses basket/on sofa with us in the evenings for the first 4 months. Unlike ceebee tho, we have had a nightmare pretty much ever since...I dont know if he would hate going to sleep alone anyway or if we helped him need company to do so by keeping him with us for that long, but apart from a blissful 3 months or so last year (when he would just say night night and settle down), DS always cries when we leave him to go to sleep, even if only for a few minutes - its no fun at all and when I have next baby, in June, I think I will be putting him/her to sleep alone in our room in the evenings from maybe 2 months or so....

My dd slept in her basket in the lounge till she was a few months old. Then one day I just took the basket up after she'd fallen asleep rather than waiting till we went to bed.
I think we did this once we'd got to a stage where she stayed asleep in it rather than waking every half hour etc. And I could relax better when she was upstairs. I kept thinking she'd wake up every time she snuffled or moved.

I think ds was six weeks when we put him upstairs to bed, but that was because the evening was his absolute best sleep - he slept from about 7 to 11pm without a murmur and I thought he may as well be doing that in the calm quiet environment of his room, and we did enjoy the baby-free time after those first fraught weeks!

So I think as always with little babies it's do it, see if it works, and if it doesn't, don't!

Agree not to worry about creating habits this young. Babies this little are changing and developing too rapidly to stick with any habit for long, IME and IMO!

We kept our DCs downstairs with us for 4-6 months ish - then i would go up to bed with the baby and give last feed in bed before DH came up, then all to sleep for a couple of hours (then me and baby up every now and then during the night!). I felt that it was warmer and cosier in the living room anyway - our bedroom felt cold with just the baby in there IYSWIM, though with 2 adults there during the night I felt that it was warmed up more.

Also made it easier to cluster feed throught the evening, which pretty much guaranteed a 5-7hr stretch of sleep later on for us.

And I meant to say that they both settled very well into 7-7 sleeping pattern when they were older. Being downstairs did not affect them at all.

oh for now i wouldnt worry about it, just nap/sleep when she does.
think about it round 4/6 months.

With dd we foolishly spent hours at night trying to get her to sleep in her cot. With ds1 we'd wised up and let him lie in the living room, looking around till he felt like a snooze.

Ds2 is 12 weeks (or 5wks, was prem). We've just got to the point where having him downstairs is more work than putting him to bed. Because he cries a lot rather than looking around happily. So now we're putting him to bed. I think he was telling us it was too bright and noisy and he wanted his nice quiet cradle.

If you're going to have months of problems, you're going to have months of problems. This has more to do with the baby than with your parenting. So you may as well put it off as long as possible! And you may not have months of problems.