s/o Bedtime routines, a Q

MrsIH · October 2010

I was just reading the bedtime routine post (or what time LO goes to bed). Our LO is 6 weeks old and I feel like a bad mama that we haven't fully established a bedtime routine with him. LO is definitely most alert/awake during the evenings and he also wants to eat and eat. Early on MH would take him and have Daddy time and it would allow me to get some sleep (we still do this). LO is still up every hour and for the last two nights has slept two hours straight one time, yay progress! He's a super mellow baby during the day but doesn't seem to want to sleep in stretches longer than 2 hours at night time so far. Anyway, when MH takes him he'll give him a bottle and then he'll eventually fall asleep in the bassinet in our living room. When MH is ready for bed he'll transfer him to his crib in his room and then I'll take over from there for the night feedings. Perhaps by doing this we haven't really established a proper bed time schedule but I've also read that it's difficult to put a month old (or in this case a bit older) on a schedule, hmm? I definitely have heard of the three B's but how do you figure our what time is bed time? TIA for the input. :-)

lelekay · October 2010

We starting creating our current bedtime routine around 7-8 weeks. Honestly, the way we determined when to have bedtime was that Henry used to go to bed when we did, around 9:30-10:00. But then he completely changed how often he was eating (slightly less often), and one night he wanted to eat around 7:30 or so, whereas before he ate around 6:00, then again at about 9:00,right before bed. So, instead of waiting for him to eat again after that (probably around 11:00), we bathed him, fed him, and put him in his crib for the first time, starting at 7:30. He slept beautifully....around 4-5 hours! A few days later we added reading "Goodnight Moon" every night, and eventually we'll add other books. SInce then, he sleeps in his crib for the first part of the night (around 4-5 hours), then after a feed at around 1:30-2:00, usually comes to bed with us in the co-sleeper until about 8:30 (with another feed in there somewhere around 5:30-6:00).

lola808 · October 2010

Yeah, I think it might be difficult when they're feeding so often. We didn't really do a bedtime routine and start the "schedule" until he was probably around 2 months. That's when he was regularly getting sleepy between 6 and 7 and then sleeping 3-4 hours at a time (and sleeping less during the day). Once we noticed this pattern, we started the pre-bed bath/book/nurse routine and it's stuck. Even now though, we aren't super strict with our routines and will alter them as needed for family activities. We just try to follow his lead with it and thankfully it's worked out for us. Smile

MrsIH · October 2010

lola808:
We just try to follow his lead with it and thankfully it's worked out for us.

Good advice, thanks It's amazing how clear his daytime routine became when MH went back to work and it was just the two of us at home. He would wake up, nap, play all somewhat during the same time per day.

redshoegirl · October 2010

We actually didn't have a set routine until nearly 3 months. They started getting nightly baths at 8 weeks, but we didn't do the whole "bath book bottle bed" thing until 12 weeks - honestly, they just didn't have the late night attention span until then. And it doesn't seem to have hurt anything by starting a bit later (and we actually started AFTER they began STTN, so the having or not having that very set routine didn't seem to affect that for us).

inamra · October 2010

J is so young! Don't feel bad about not having an established routine yet! We didn't even start to attempt one until 2mo+. Although, I think that's why we had a 1am bedtime going for a while =/ because that's when HE would go down for 5 hours w/o waking up. And we didn't bathe him for the first month anyway (until his umbilical cord fell off) so there wasn't a bath before bedtime regardless.

But when we finally started establishing one, we knew that 1am was WAY too late, so we just shifted it down until we reached a time (we start bedtime routine at 8:30pm now) that seemed to work with everyone for now. Then it's bath, story, nurse, sleep. As you saw from the previous post/poll, bedtimes are all across the board, so I'd say just do a bit of experimenting with little adjustments in the time a day (they said 15 min a day) and see what works for your family

MrsIH · October 2010

Okay, great! I wasn't sure if we should have started a bedtime routine by now but he is pretty young still so we'll try and get something established eventually. I don't feel so bad now :P

Another Q, when did your LO's start sleeping for longer than 1-2 stretches at night? The last two nights J has slept for 2 hours and then 1 hour followed by another hour.

inamra · October 2010

MrsIH:
Another Q, when did your LO's start sleeping for longer than 1-2 stretches at night? The last two nights J has slept for 2 hours and then 1 hour followed by another hour.

It really varies for every kid. LO started sleeping 5 hrs a night at ~5 weeks, but like I mentioned earlier, that was only with a 1am bedtime! And he never napped for more than 20 min at a time (he hated naps and would cry bloody murder the first thing we put him down). When we started to shift his bedtime earlier (and starting having a better nap routine), he started sleeping 3 hours at a time even though our pedi told us that he'd sleep *longer* with earlier bedtime and more naps. Go figure! Now we're at about 4hr stretches on some nights, then 6hr or 2-3hr some other nights. There are things like growth spurts, teething, developmental milestones, etc that may be affecting his sleep too, so I kinda just stopped worrying about it and I don't really track it anymore. All I'm tracking now is that he consistently does EASY during the day until he starts his bedtime routine at 8:30pm and he consistently wakes up around 8:30am.

redshoegirl · October 2010

MrsIH:
Another Q, when did your LO's start sleeping for longer than 1-2 stretches at night? The last two nights J has slept for 2 hours and then 1 hour followed by another hour.

Hmm. They dropped one night feeding at 6 weeks, which gave them a 4 hour stretch (this was after their 11pm feed). Then they stayed that way (with at least 1 and sometimes 2 feedings per night) until 12 weeks, when they started STTN. But even then, how well they slept through the night depended on when they went to bed. For a long time we couldn't put them to bed before 10pm - it was like it interrupted their sleep patterns in a weird place and they had to go through an entire sleep/awake cycle before they could settle down for the night. Now we start their routine at 8pm and they're usually asleep by 8.45pm (and have been waking up for a 5am feeding the last week or two - *sigh*), but it was a very gradual process to get to 8pm and we just followed their cues - if they started fussing and rubbing their eyes when we gave them their bath, then the next night we moved it 30 min earlier. Now it seems to have stabilized at 8pm - not sure when or if we'll move it to the mythical 6.30pm time that a lot of parents seem to have lol!

Hmm. Just realized I went off on a minor tangent there, sorry. Stick out tongue

Married2MrWright · October 2010

MrsIH:
Our LO is 6 weeks old and I feel like a bad mama that we haven't fully established a bedtime routine with him.

OMG, Tara, please don't feel bad! He's SIX WEEKS OLD. Anything more than a general routine shoudn't really be expected at this point. Honestly.

That said, we did start our bedtime routine around 8 weeks with Libby...but still based totally on her sleepy cues...so it was very mutable. But we'd do, bath, PJs with nightttime diaper and a quick book and then nurse to sleep (we bedshare) with the Twilight Turtle on the nightstand. We still do that routine now that she's nearly nine months old...but we've added brushing teeth to the routine after her bath. We aim for 7:30-8:00 p.m. for the bath and 8-8:30 p.m. to be in bed. Sometimes it's 30-45 minutes earlier, sometimes 30-45 minutes later, depending upon her sleepy cues and the day she's had. When she was Jacob's age it was closer to 9:30-10 p.m. before she went down for the night. She'd feed and have a nap from about 6:30-8 p.m. Then be up and we'd do the bath and night-night routine after that.

Jacob might be more wakeful right now due to a growth spurt...he's the right age for the next big spurt after the 3 week old one. Hang in there mama. I remember Libby waking to feed more when she was having a growth spurt. She settled into sleeping more than 2-3 hours again once she was through it. I cannot remember when she started to sleep for longer than that because we bedshare and she'd nurse while I half-slept, but I want to say that around 10 weeks old she started to sleep for 4-5 hours at a stretch between nursing at night. We still bedshare and she still nurses overnight, but again, most of the time I sleep through it. She latches on once or twice a night between going down at 8:30-9 p.m. So our routine is nursing to sleep around that time and then maybe nursing sometime between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. and then again around 4:30-5 a.m. (I get up for work at 5 a.m.). Then she gets milk in a cup from my mom or DH around 9 a.m. or so.

MrsIH · October 2010

Thanks everyone!

Guess what! LO slept for 5+ hours last night! I couldn't believe it. We gave him a bath, massage/lotion and a bottle and he conked out. This was around 8:45 and he slept until 2:15am! I was shocked. But then he was up every 40-50 minutes until morning. He would eat a little, fall asleep and then wake up to eat a bit again almost an hour later... but still, 5 hours?! He must have knew I was writing this post? LOL

parrotgirl · October 2010

MrsIH:
Thanks everyone!
Guess what! LO slept for 5+ hours last night! I couldn't believe it. We gave him a bath, massage/lotion and a bottle and he conked out. This was around 8:45 and he slept until 2:15am! I was shocked. But then he was up every 40-50 minutes until morning. He would eat a little, fall asleep and then wake up to eat a bit again almost an hour later... but still, 5 hours?! He must have knew I was writing this post? LOL

Yay for 5+ hours of sleep!! Were you up every hour checking on him? haha. I did that the first time he slept over 5 hours- just to make sure he was ok. literally, every hour.

Are you writing everything down? I know its hard to keep track when he's up every hour...but we did that for 2.5 months and kept track of when he woke to eat at night and when he napped. Eventually it was like clockwork, most days and nights he'd go to sleep around the same time and that is how he got his schedule.

MrsIH · October 2010

parrotgirl:
MrsIH:
Thanks everyone!
Guess what! LO slept for 5+ hours last night! I couldn't believe it. We gave him a bath, massage/lotion and a bottle and he conked out. This was around 8:45 and he slept until 2:15am! I was shocked. But then he was up every 40-50 minutes until morning. He would eat a little, fall asleep and then wake up to eat a bit again almost an hour later... but still, 5 hours?! He must have knew I was writing this post? LOL
Yay for 5+ hours of sleep!! Were you up every hour checking on him? haha. I did that the first time he slept over 5 hours- just to make sure he was ok. literally, every hour.
Are you writing everything down? I know its hard to keep track when he's up every hour...but we did that for 2.5 months and kept track of when he woke to eat at night and when he napped. Eventually it was like clockwork, most days and nights he'd go to sleep around the same time and that is how he got his schedule.

Oh yes, I was! I couldn't believe it. I do keep track on my iPhone and I constantly look back on the previous couple of days, there definitely are some patterns there most nights

MrsIH · October 2010

I knew it was too good to be true (or too soon), LOL! MH and I overlapped with each other and when he came to bed I was asleep... he said "he's still sleeping" so I assumed it was straight through. But this morning he told me he woke up once or twice to eat and went right back down after I went to bed. :-)

MrsNJSwimmer · October 2010

I agree with pp, too soon. It might even frustrate you b/c he might not fall into the pattern well yet! I would just let him lead, if you're still comfortable with that. You're doing great!

redshoegirl · October 2010

MrsNJSwimmer:
I agree with pp, too soon. It might even frustrate you b/c he might not fall into the pattern well yet! I would just let him lead, if you're still comfortable with that. You're doing great!

This is a very good point. We did try to have a routine earlier because I kept reading on the 0-3 month board about people who had them with their 2-week-old or whatever, but it was frustrating for everyone involved because their bedtime was too variable and they simply weren't ready. Maybe there are some babies that works for, but I think the vast majority need to be older (and I also suspect that, like many things that are posted about on 0-3, moms' claims are greatly exaggerated...).

MrsIH · October 2010

redshoegirl:
MrsNJSwimmer:
I agree with pp, too soon. It might even frustrate you b/c he might not fall into the pattern well yet! I would just let him lead, if you're still comfortable with that. You're doing great!
This is a very good point. We did try to have a routine earlier because I kept reading on the 0-3 month board about people who had them with their 2-week-old or whatever, but it was frustrating for everyone involved because their bedtime was too variable and they simply weren't ready. Maybe there are some babies that works for, but I think the vast majority need to be older (and I also suspect that, like many things that are posted about on 0-3, moms' claims are greatly exaggerated...).

Definitely comfortable with letting him lead. He has lead with his daytime routine and it works great ... just have to be patient with the nighttime one and watch his cues :-)

expatjen · October 2010

K is 14 weeks today and he didn't really have a nighttime routine until about 3-4 weeks ago, when he started sleeping between 5-6 hours at a stretch. Before that he was waking up every 2-3 hours to feed, so there was never a real "bedtime".

Now, after a bath, I change him into his jammies around 9pm, he plays for a bit, nurses and then goes to bed by 10:30. He's up around 4:30-5am for just about 1/2 an hour to nurse and have a quick diaper change, then back to sleep till just about 8am.

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