D.C. Area Babies
sleeping ??
when did you start putting LO down before you? DS goes to sleep when we do 1030-11 and sleeps straight through until 7, which is great:-) when should he start going down before 9....do they go back to waking up during the night when you do this?? if we try putting him down at 1o he fusses but then at 1030 he is out in 5 minutes.......thanks
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Re: sleeping ??
wow, that's a pretty late bedtime. does he take a nap in the evening? can you cut out the nap and put him down earlier?
can you start with 10-15mins earlier per day than you are doing now and slowly make his bedtime early?
I can't answer your question b/c I simply cannot remember. I know in the 1st few weeks, I'd try to put DD down anytime b/w 7pm-10pm and she would not fall asleep til 1am, OMG those days were so horrible.
she's now 17.5mo old and her bedtime is b/w 7-7:10pm
I know its a late bedtime
He does usually take an evening nap maybe we can try that...the few times I have tried even 945 or 10(to move it up gradually) he screams until 1030, unless we are holding him. If we just put him down at 1030, out like a light with no fussing at all....
we had that same thing of 1am for the first few weeks, that is why 1030 doesnt seem so bad to me because it is WAAYYY better than 1am!!
Why would you mess with a pretty good system if he's STTN?
DS has a later bedtime, too, and I kept wondering when he would want to go to sleep at 6 pm - he hasn't so far. He had an evening catnap at 6:30 until he was almost 5 months old and would go down by 9. When he dropped the catnap on his own, bedtime moved earlier (between 7:30 and 8). I'd go with your LO's signals especially if you're getting a chunk of good sleep!
If your DS is sleeping through the night at 3 months, I'd keep right on doing what's working for you!! Enjoy your uninterrupted sleep!!!
We read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and started a bedtime "routine" with DS at about 4 months (bottle, story, bed). They can't really get into a scheduled sleep/nap routine until closer to 6 months, from what I remember. I think at 4 mo my little guy was napping for about 30 min every 2 hours throughout the day, and then sort of STTN from about 10 until 6 with one night feeding. Once we got to 6 mo, he was sleeping from 7-7, and napping 3 times during the day.
Enjoy this sleep while it lasts - if he hits the 4 month wakeful period like mine did, you'll be glad you slept now!
So true! While I hate to be one of those "you just wait" moms, we went back to square one between 4 and 5 months.
At 4 months I would start making sure you have a very consistent bedtime routine and then working it back gradually. If you drop the evening nap, you might have more luck with that. You could move back the evening nap and bedtime 15 minutes a night simultaneously to get it where you want it.
Research shows that kids need an earlier bedtime (7-8 at the latest) and that the shifted schedule, even if they're still getting enough sleep, is not as good for brain development as an earlier schedule. At 3 months, though, it is awfully early to start worrying too much about that - it is something to think about more in the 6 month and on range.
Good luck!
I think at about 1 month we decided that we needed to give DS an official bedtime and we started putting him down at 7:30. He was up every 2 hours until he was 4 months old though, so it really was just a random time that we designated as bedtime. At some point, he moved his bedtime up to 8 pm and has been there ever since.
I think he's at a great age to start instilling a bedtime. Since it's such a late time already, start by moving it back in increments of 15 minutes.
I think that at 3 mos. DD was going to bed around 9:30 or so. She would sleep until about 7:00 a.m.
I can't remember exactly when we moved her bedtime up, but I think it was around 4 or 5 mos. We gradually kept moving it earlier and earlier. I'm pretty sure that she was going to bed around 7:30 p.m. by the time she was 6 mos. old.
I remember that we moved her bedtime up when she cut out the last bottle of the night. Not that I equate better sleep with solids, but I do remember her last bottle moving up earlier in the evening after she started doing some cereal at dinner.
Oh, and we were lucky. No 4 month wakeful period for us. I just wanted to give you some hope that not all babies go through that.