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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
Bedtime routine?
I'm still trying to figure out what works best and actually get LO on a decent schedule. Could you ladies answer some questions for me:
1. What's your bedtime routine consist of?
2. What time do you put LO to bed?
3. If you feed at the end of the routine, how do you keep LO from falling asleep then? I don't want him to be in the habit of nursing to sleep, so I'm wondering if I should nurse and then do bedtime routine? Thanks for your input.
DS#1 11/28/09
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Re: Bedtime routine?
1. Since she was 4 weeks old: Bath, Massage, Jammies, Read, Bottle, Bed
2. 6:30/6:45 (this started out around 9 at 4 weeks and got earlier over time)
3. I don't feed her in her room. She never falls asleep to the bottle. She rubs her eyes but that's it. We feed her downstairs and then maybe 10 minutes later put her in her crib upstairs. If your LO does fall asleep when feeding, then I would do that somewhere before going into the bedroom if it were me. DD associates everything we do at nighttime with going to sleep but she does not fall asleep until after she is put down.
1. Change diaper, into PJ's, read story, bottle of BM, short cuddle with the Wubbanub then into the crib - sometimes awake, sometimes asleep.
2. We watch for her cues any tme after 6:30pm - before then and we'll let her have a short catnap. Usually it is in the 7pm range. It varies day to day depending on our day (if it was busy, slow, how much she napped, etc.)
3. She usually doesn't fall asleep on the bottle. If she starts to drift off I start to pull the bottle out and she starts sucking again.
My Family Bliggity Blog
1. What's your bedtime routine consist of? bottle, bath, lotion/massage/jammies/cuddle, lights out and she's in her crib
2. What time do you put LO to bed? around 630
3. If you feed at the end of the routine, how do you keep LO from falling asleep then? I don't want him to be in the habit of nursing to sleep, so I'm wondering if I should nurse and then do bedtime routine? Thanks for your input. When I use BF before bed, I would always just pick her up and burp her...that usually was enough to wake her and then I would just lay her down after she burped. Putting the bottle at the beginning really helped us a lot.
1. Bath (everyone other day), bf, swing around 8. I wake him up around 10, change him, feed him, and he is back down for the night by 10:30.
2. See above.
3. Hmm, no advice there. Sometimes he falls asleep during the 10pm feeding, sometimes he sleeps right through it, sometimes he is wide awake until after he is burped.
Her routine goes like this:
Nurse
Bath
Jammies
Story Time
Nurse and sing to her
daddy puts her to sleep.
She sometimes falls asleep while nursing just before bed but not always.
She in bed and asleep at 7pm.
We usually do bottle downstairs, go upstairs for diaper change, put on sleep sack, book, bed. Occasionally if she has her last bottle an hour or so before we start bedtime, I might nurse her at the end of the story just to fill her up a little more. I think feeding her in the living room helps for us - she's still awake between the light in the room and the movement to get her up to the bedroom.
Putting DD to bed around 7 worked great most nights for *her* but not so much for our schedules (we weren't eating dinner until after 8, which doesn't work when I'm going to bed at 9:30). We're working on putting her to bed closer to 7:30 or 8 now, so we have time to do everything to do for the baby plus dinner with her before bedtime.
1. bath, jammies, sometimes I play with her a little bit, then I take her to her room and give her a bottle, then crib.
2. usually around 8pm.
3. DD will wake up once I move her to her crib and she puts herself to sleep.
bath (every other day), pjs, read, cuddle on the couch/bottle, bed
not in bed until 10
We just started this and we're on day 5 and so far so good....
We put him in his pjs at around 6/6:30 - whenever he needs a diaper change around that time.
Then we start the routine at about 8/8:30. Here's what we do:
- I nurse him
- Put his nighttime diaper on
- Read 3 books (one while he's sitting on my lap in the bedroom and 2 while he's laying in his crib). We put the sleepsack on when he's in the crib. While we read the books, the mobile is on playing music.
- When we're done with the 3 books, wind up the mobile and shut off the light.
- That's it. 2 of the nights he cried after we shut the light off, but fell asleep within 5 minutes and 3 of the nights he just went right to bed.
Good luck!
1. Bath (soap every other night), lotion, PJ's, book, feeding.
2. DD is usually in bed asleep by 8:30 and we start our bedtime routine around 7.
3. We do feed at the end of the routine because that's the only way we've gotten her to nurse the longest. If I feed her before the bath she'll only eat like she does at a regular feeding which is about 8-15min and I know that won't last her anymore than 3-4 hours. When I nurse at the end of the routine she nurses for about 30min sometimes a bit more than that. But she does wake up usually when I put her in the crib and then will put herself back to sleep. She's usually not totally asleep while nursing, just drowsy.