wanting to start a sleep schedule..any suggestions?

eash24

My little boy is going on 6 weeks this saturday and i would like to start setting a time to lay him down for bed. Right now he is staying up tell about 12:30. We have such a hard time putting him down. We have tried giving him a bath and feeding him right before we lay him down but he just fights it so much. The one night we started at 9:00 and he never fell asleep until 11:30. If anybody has some suggestions that would be great.

Rsoc23

We bathe, feed, and lay him down around 10:30. Once he is down, we don't pick him back up (unless he needs to be changed or fed again). We will give him the paci back when it falls out and he fusses. 

 We turn the lights down in the nursery, put on a relaxing cd, and put him down. The first night took about an hour of him fighting sleep. Last night was the 4th night and it took him about 10min to go to sleep.

Schedules work! And he is only six weeks old.  

bpwife&mama

We do the same routine every night and he is down by 9:30 and we start at 9. We bathe, lotion, pjs, feed, swaddle and rock.  It works every night like a charm.  Do you swaddle? I really think the swaddle helps.

HL223

Just a note/observation ... We tried this with DD and did the whole bath thing, and she perked right up. Just something to look for - some babies are relaxed with a bath and others it has the opposite effect. So it backfired on our bedtime plan...but we've adjusted since then.

blondiemama09

HL223:

Just a note/observation ... We tried this with DD and did the whole bath thing, and she perked right up. Just something to look for - some babies are relaxed with a bath and others it has the opposite effect. So it backfired on our bedtime plan...but we've adjusted since then.

DD is VERY alert after bathtime, too. I couldn't do this before bedtime!

BostonGayGal

Rsoc23:

We bathe, feed, and lay him down around 10:30. Once he is down, we don't pick him back up (unless he needs to be changed or fed again). We will give him the paci back when it falls out and he fusses. 

 We turn the lights down in the nursery, put on a relaxing cd, and put him down. The first night took about an hour of him fighting sleep. Last night was the 4th night and it took him about 10min to go to sleep.

Schedules work! And he is only six weeks old.  

 

So you are letting your 6 week old cry it out? 

eash24

How many naps does your baby take in a day?

eash24

Rsoc23 How many naps does your baby take in a day?

Rsoc23

He actually sleeps quite a bit; I asked the pediatrician and she said it was normal. He is usually awake about 6-8hrs a day. I won't let him cry it out--so far he has only fussed a little bit when we do bedtime.

RA1109

Honestly my suggestion as a 2nd time mom is to not try to do a schedule this early.  Maybe you would do all those things and they would work, but if you had done nothing that would work too.  Let the baby figure it out.  You're only setting yourself up for frustration.  Sleep when he sleeps and just go with the flow.  Everything is a phase.

My LO was up from 2am till 5am when he was 6 weeks old.  He now STTN from 10pm till 7am every night, and we don't do any sort of routine, he just does it on his own.  He's 10 weeks old and started STTN at 8 weeks.