bed time routine for 8 week old?

[issysmilkbottle]

I have a dd who will be 8 weeks old on sunday, she is Bf on demand and has a couple of decent naps in the day and is generally happy and chatty.

In the evenings its taking about 2 hours to settle her to sleep, she falls asleep but wakes within 5 mins, fusses on and off the breasts and has a winge. We had a collic phase between 2 and 4 weeks and this resolved when we moved upstairs to settle her with low stimulation

The two hours to settle is a pain though, she will generally sleep until around 1 or 2, feed burp and back to sleep within half hour until around 6...

Can you please tell me your routines? I'd rather not bathe her everyday.... So any tips welcome

My routine when both my babes were 8 weeks was basically BF every 3 hours, and needed a nap after having been awake for 90 mins, always without fail both of mine could not stay awake longer than 90 mins when this young, as both mine were nap monsters. If they did 3 yawns in a row and weren't back in their cot, it became def com 5. I found the more they slept the better they slept.

But I really found the bath every night relaxed them and made them sleepy ready for a final feed in a dark room at this age. Worked a treat for me. Sorry, probably not what you wanted to hear...

The sleeping you've got at the mo sounds pretty good compared to my experience tbh. We did a bath every night, but DS hardly slept at all from 6-13 weeks (some days slept 6 hours total in a 24 hour period). Baby massage, which I did every day after learning it, was the only thing that really seemed to help to settle DS. But I think he was atypical.

DD started her bedtime routine when she was 2 weeks old. We would always bath her at 7pm, after the bath we gave her a massage with cream and then a feed in our room with very low lights and she was very happy to go to bed by then. We would always put her in her cot awake so she could get used to to settleing herself.

Before that we were not bathing her everynight and we had difficulties when tried to put her in bed. She wouldn't go to sleep and cried a lot so she was all the time in my breast. We found that bathing her was giving her clues that after the bath she was going to bed and made our lifes much easier. Also it helped her to relax and go happy to sleep.

It may not be what you want to listen but it realy help us a lot. The bath is not because she is dirty but more for relaxing purposes. Now she loves so much the water that I am going to start going to swim with her. She is 23 weeks and everynight when we go upstairs she knows what is next and gets really excited and happy.

thanks, I may have to try the bath and massage.

She's in her moses basket which sits on her cot at the moment, should I move her into her cot or stay in mb?

Also we currently rock/pat her to sleep at the moment, she'll only do it upright too, so I need to week on putting her down awake too, I'm guessing that she'll cry over that, should I try for all sleeps or just start with her daytime naps?

Thanks again

sorry meant work not week!

We moved from crib to cot at around 13 weeks, which seemed to work well for us.

I'm not sure I can advise on the rest, as we just did whatever it took to try and get DS to sleep at all.

But what I have read is that try to put them in their bed awake but sleepy once a day. Don't know if it works...

We did bath every other night, but baby massage/yoga every night, until DS got too wriggly and curious to stay still, around 6 months. Now, at 16 months, he is just getting into again.