how do you decide what time 'bedtime' should be?

[curlyLJ]

My dd is 8 weeks and up until recently DH and I had been keeping her up in the living room with us, letting her have short naps on me or DH until we all went up to bed. I would then feed her to sleep, but sometimes not suceeding in getting her to settle until 11.30-midnight. Needless to say this was killing me as I wasn't getting enough sleep, and it wasn't ideal for her as she would scream and cry between naps (which I thought was just evening fussiness or colic, when she was actually just tired)

well, this week I invested in a book which was recommended by someone on here, Teach Yourself Baby Sleep, and I decided I really needed to train DD to go to sleep on her own and not depend on sucking on me.

It seems to be working... for the last 2 nights we have implemented a 'bedtime routine' starting at 8.30pm. Last night I put her in her basket at 9pm but it took 1.5 hrs for her to fully settle, but then she slept until 5am!!

What I am not sure of is how to decide what time this bedtime routine should begin. I know some people put their DCs dowm about 6pm - I think this would be too early for my DD - but I also think she was a bit over-tired by the time we got her in bed last night. How do you 'know' what time is best, or should I just gradually bring it forward and see what happens?

I think you have to work out what time works best for your family. E.g. Our DS (8mths old) goes to bed at 7.30pm so he can have time with DH when he gets home from work, we can eat all together at 6pm & then have a bath & milk. But also we are not keeping him up too late so that he gets overtired, which we worked out through trial & error. I think at the age of your DD he went to bed at 7pm having had a nap at 5-5.30pm.

curlyLJ , I'm bamboozled by this too! There's no way my DD (9 weeks) would sleep from teatime (or dinnertime to southern/posh folk ) to next morning, regardless of feeds in between. Yet I feel many references to bedtime routines seem to think it should start around then. I've been trying to establish bedtime as sometime around 10-11 but with little luck & have posted my own questions on that. It's so hard to know what to do, isn't it?

Maybe, like me, you'd also love to know what many people consider as "sleeping through". Does this include a so-called dreamfeed (something I have yet to achieve - how do you avoid wind?!)

curlyLJ, I have followed a similar pattern to you with my DD. Its really tempting to keep her up until I go to bed because it maximises my sleep, but I can tell that she is sleepy in the evenings and probably should be going to bed earlier.

My plan now is that as my DD (now 14 weeks) sleeps for longer and longer I'm gradually bringing bedtime earlier - meaning more adult time after she is in bed too.

I think we are all making it up as we go along really and hopefully we'll get there in the end!

My DS is 7 months old and I've only just worked out that his natural bedtime is 6.30pm... We used to keep him up later but it didn't work. Basically I spent a few weeks trialling out different bedtimes and eventually he'd settle much faster the closer we got to 6.30pm. Bearing in mind this was after the big 4-6 month developmental leap when sleep goes haywire (it did in our case!)

I had read that a baby's natural bedtime is usually between 6-8pm.

If your baby took 1.5 hours to settle it probably means you put her to bed too late (we used to put DS to bed at half 7, he'd wake after 45 mins and take 90 mins to get back to sleep again. We tried making it 45 mins later which made things worse. Moving it earlier meant he wasn't too overtired!).

Also at 8 weeks, I wouldn't worry about baby sucking to sleep - that's quite young. My DS didn't show signs of properly self settling until about 4 months old and only now does he do it regularly.

6.30 - 7pm is best and worked twice.

Then dream feed at 10.30pm

I always think that if you start a good strict routine then life is easier.

Personally I found this time best as you have time to relax and get things done.

Babies do have their own natural bedtimes. These tend to settle at between 6-8pm for most babies, but this can take a while as it depends on the biological clock maturing (which happens later in babies with colic than in non-colic babies). 8 weeks is still very young.

In the No-Cry Sleep Solution, Elizabeth Pantley suggests putting your baby to bed as soon as they show signs of tiredness in the evening after 6.30pm. In general, earlier bedtimes result in babies sleeping for longer, not them waking earlier.

At first, I used to do 'bedtime' at whatever time DS naturally woke from a sleep around my bedtime. He naturally settled at 8pm (then 9pm when the clocks changed) but as he got to 3 months or so I could gradually bring that forward and he now goes to bed between 6 and 7pm. I find I need to be flexible about the time depending on when his last nap ended - if there's too short a gap, he's not tired enough, and too long a gap and he's overtired and harder to settle.

I'd work on the time of bedtime first, and when you've worked out a time that suits your DS, start the routine about 30 mins before.

Don't feel you have to train her to sleep without you yet if you don't want to - babies vary hugely in when they can learn this. Some get it really early on, and for others it can be months and months before they are able to remotely self-settle.

Meandacat, I think 'sleeping through' means so many different things to different people, it's pretty meaningless! Scientifically, it means 5 or 6 hours, but some people mean 7-7, or sleeping through the time when their parents sleep.

to follow on from this topic - what i dont understand is how do i bring my babys bedtime forward without disrupting feeding schedule? at the moment he feeds at 6pm then around 8.30pm-9.00pm and bed. It can take him awhile to settle to sleep. he does nap between those feeds so maybe he is ready for an earlier bedtime? but then i would be feeding him at 6.00 and then again maybe at half seven? would that be the right thing to do? he is 10 weeks

frodob if you feed at 6pm, put to bed and your baby would (hopefully) sleep until, wake for a feed at 8.30pm/9pm and go straight back to sleep again. That's what my DS does - feeds at 6pm, bed by 6.30pm, wakes for a feed at 9.30pm/10pm (it used to be 8.30pm/9). Sometimes he doesn't wake if he's had a big feed at 6pm and goes for much longer.

My DS is now 10 weeks old and he goes to bed anytime between 6.30pm and 7.30pm depending on what he has been doing in the time period before that. I tend not to let him stay awake longer than 1.5 to 2 hours before i put him to bed as he will start to get tired then and any time longer than that he gets overtired and really difficult to settle. So if he has had a nap at 5pm for an hour i will then keep him up until 7.30pm playing and doing bedtime routine and put to bed at 7.30pm. However, if we have been out for the day and so slept a long time in his pram and wakes at say 4pm and wont nap again at 5pm i will put him to sleep earlier.

Like you i started putting him to bed when we went later in the evening but started a bedtime routine of bath, lights out, quite room, music and then feed at around 5 weeks. We then gradually brought bedtime forward by 15 mins or so every other evening (or when he had been awake for long enough and was showing signs of being tired earlier). He still wakes once in the night at around 4.30am but tends to just feed and go back to sleep again. I have tried doing a dream feed but he tends to still wake up at 4.30pm so stopped bothering.

I should also mention that we now put him to sleep for the evening in his own room which seems to have really helped him sleep for much longer although it took a few days for him to get used to it.

Feeding wise, i know some might disagree with this but i always feed him an hour before i put him to bed from the breast and then again just before we put him down an hour later with a big bottle of expressed milk. This is because i am convinced that i just do not have much milk to give him from my breast towards the end of the day and so giving a big bottle of expressed just makes sure he gets enough so he can get a long sleep before needing to be fed again which seems to work really well for me.

Good luck!