Bedtime Routines

[Ag00se]

Hi everyone,

My DS is coming up for 11 weeks old and since he was 6 weeks old we've had a loose bedtime routine:

We put him into pyjamas after his bath (twice a week) at 7-8, or straight into pyjamas if not a bath night, and I feed him and he naps (I often nap at this point too as my husband works weird shifts meaning I take the night shift alone).

Starting between 8.30 and 9.30, we change nappies, daddy reads a story and I feed again. I cradle him in my arms and rock him to a deep sleep and put him down into his next to me cot between 9 and 10.

He sleeps for an hour or so in his next to me and then becomes unsettled and really only wants to sleep on me from this point. Following advice from here, I have co-slept safely for the last 3 nights so I have had a bit more sleep.

He wakes up wide awake at 4-5am (to be fair, this is when my husband gets up for work) but generally does sleep until 7.30 when he drifts back off.

We are baby led with feeds throughout the day and night (usually feeds around 1-2am and 4-5am) and with naps during the day.

My questions, from the experience of you all:

As our fourth trimester ends, do we need to change things from 3 months onwards to prepare for the future? Do we need an earlier bedtime?

Is it possible to mix and match sleeping in the next to me and co-sleeping or do I need to be consistent?

Thanks for your help!

Well I can’t really comment on your routine but I will just tell you what we did.
From first day home, it was upstairs at about 7pm, bath (every night), story (often made up at newborn age), fed then down in cot while sleepy but still awake. Lights out and I left the room. This was their own bedroom we never had them in with us - it wasn’t the recommendation at the time and I wouldn’t do it any different now. My son was pretty good at dropping off to sleep, my DD had reflux and it took much longer to get her to drift off - she would often wake up so I had to soothe her, without picking up if possible, just gentle stroking and soft murmurings. But at three months this fussiness stopped. Then at my bedtime of about 11pm I would go in and give baby a sleepy feed in the dark, check nappy and down again. They would wake up for another feed about 3ish. Then my son would be up to start the day around 5.30, my DD would sleep a bit longer.
I think they dropped one of the feeds at around three months and not long after they would sleep through about half the time, by six months definitely sleeping from 7.30/8pm to 5.30/6.30am. I never let them nap late in the afternoon - I’d wake them if need be. I BF baby 1 until five months when I returned to work, baby 2 for a year, both started real food around four months - both were around 10lbs at birth and again, it was not the recommendation to just do milk for first six months, and again I would not chsnge how I did things.
I had two contented babies who gave me very few disturbed nights, and I had evenings with my husband. This was the routine. I didn’t change it other than maybe go to sleep at 8 rather than 7.30 as they got older. Bath time got more fun and stories got longer and my son was keen to stretch the bedtime out a bit by asking funny questions ‘mum, if we didn’t have bones how would we stand up’? But I never had a hard time getting them to go to bed. They are 20 and 22 now! My son is still an early riser and my DD still not a morning person.

Just do what works, don’t worry about the future. Get you all the most sleep by doing what works. There’s no such thing as ‘bad habits’ for sleep. Just follow baby’s lead.

Oh my god please ignore everything the first poster said. So outdated and dangerous by what we know now. Read Helen Ball’s book about infant sleep, it really helped me