Negative association with bedtime routine??

[CT123]

We have trouble getting our 3 month old ds to sleep at night - nothing new there I think! Been trying No Cry Sleep Solution and picked up a few ideas. We have a bedtime routine now, including massage, books, song and feed. It takes ds 2-4 hours to go to sleep in his cot. He'll happily sleep on us but screams as soon as he's put down. We have to feed him and rock him until eventually he's too tired to resist. Anyway, by the time we have him asleep, the 40 min bedtime routine finished 3 hours ago and surely there cannot be any association with that and sleep. In fact, the bedtime routine actually means "now scream for 2 hours"?!! Are we doing the right thing..?

We had this (DS is now 10.5 weeks), and realised that sooner or later DS was going to start associating the bedtime routine with screaming in his cot, being picked up and cuddled, screaming in his cot, etc etc.

We decided it was more important for DS to associate the bedtime routine with relaxation and sleep than being in the cot, so from about 10 days ago we just let him sleep on us during the evening (he has another feed at 10:30, after which he tends to go in the cot quite happily).

About 5 days ago we brought the carry cot from the pram into the sitting room and put him down in that once he'd been asleep a while - the first time he woke up and we just held him again until his feed, didn't try to put him in it again. Since then he's gone down in the pram carrycot about an hour after nodding off without any drama.
Tonight we put him in the pram carrycot while he was still awake and jiggled it and he nodded off. I guess the next stage will be taking the carrycot upstairs to his quiet room and see if he stays asleep, but there's no rush for that - so nice to have him quiet in the evening that I'm not going to rush anything and risk ruining it!

I think, for us, changing our attitude and accepting that we would rather spend the evening with one of us trapped on the sofa with a sleeping baby than taking it in turns to be trapped upstairs with a screaming baby was crucial, and we are much more relaxed about evenings now.

I'm afraid I don't know the answer but used to wonder the same thing - we started out putting a Mozart CD on when we were giving DD the final feed of the night and trying to settle her, in the hopes she would eventually come to associate the music with bedtime, but never once got her to sleep before the CD ended and eventually I thought she thought it meant "fuss for an hour or so" and knocked it on the head!

I'm no expert but I agree with hopefully's approach. DD is 9 weeks and for the past four nights has slept from 1 am (when we go to bed) to 8 or 9 am (though she has slept so much today that I'm sure it will all end tonight!); before that she was feeding every 3-4 hours during the night but settling back to sleep very quickly once we'd had a few sessions with an osteopath and I'd cut dairy out of my diet. I know that this is probably 99% sheer bloody luck of the draw, but she has always been fed to sleep/slept on us in the evenings etc so I wonder whether she has good sleep associations. I don't think of it as being trapped on the sofa because I feel that she's going to be so little for such a short time that I would hate her to be in a separate room asleep when I could be cuddling her

Sorry, but they don't start processing sequences until about 13 months. This means that the "bedtime routine" is possibly familiar (or the circumstances are), but certainly not something they can understand or know what comes next in at this age. It's more likely that your LO has a problem being horizontal (e.g. silent reflux) or maybe the cot mattress is cold or another physical reason for waking. I would shorten the bedtime routine as it's possibly causing overtiredness which leads to longer bedtimes.

Agree with ches, overtiredness is a massive cause of bedtime problems. Need to make sure your routine is flexable enough to cope with day to day changes in when LO is ready for bed, I don't go to bed at the same time every day.

My routine was bath, massage, Bf bed, however lots of times she was too tired for a massage or had to start earlier or even miss out the bath. If she's alrady showing sings of being tired you need to get her to bed.

I think the routine is helpful, despite them not strictly processing sequences til later. Routine really worked for my DS from an early age but it took a while.

I agree that removing him from the situation is a good idea if it continues but you could try warming the mattress first. Also, I used to snuggle my DS to sleep on me, wrapped tightly in a blanket, then put him in his cot in it til he was settled, after which I would remove it to avoid risk of cot death. This seemed to make the transition easier.

Also found introducing new ways of going to sleep best at nap time as he is much more likely to get stressy in the evenings when more tired. After practising in the day for a few weeks, I then introduced at night when we were both more confident.

But the key for me is always start with what your baby wants (it's the same as what they need for now) and make small changes to get them to where you want. Good luck- it can be a rocky road.

Not saying bedtime routines are unhelpful before 13 months, just that it's not a disaster if there isn't one or if it's not entirely consistent. A big to-do is made about them and I think it's helpful to know that it's really not all that important at this stage.