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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
honeybee111
member
Bedtime - what am I doing wrong?
honeybee111
member
DS just turned 3 months, and bedtime has been horrible. He's sort of on a schedule now - we follow EASY during the day which means an morning nap, noon nap, afternoon nap, and early evening nap. After that, all hell kind of breaks loose and I don't know how to fix it. We have a bedtime routine: bath(or wipe down), change into pjs, song, story, nurse(I EBF), and that should be it. But he refuses to sleep after that, so he's up from 7-10 pm alternating between eating, playing, and screaming. I tried to cut out the early evening nap, but there's no way he can stay up from the afternoon until bedtime, so that didn't work. He also cluster feeds in the evening, so there's that, too. But he's definitely tired during this period - he shows all his usual signs of being tired - yawning, rubbing eyes, face, etc. But he WON'T go to sleep. We still swaddle which he really likes, we use white noise which he also likes, but nothing's working. The only thing for sure is that he's definitely asleep by 10, and he will sleep from 10-4, wake up to eat, and then go back down until 7ish. I just feel like 10 is really late for a bedtime - my 3.5 year old DD has always had an early bedtime - she kind of made her own schedule. Any suggestions to make bedtime go smoother or do I just need to deal with it? It's just hard dealing with crabby fussy tired baby before bed when everyone is tired(we're also juggling my DD's bedtime in there as well).
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Re: Bedtime - what am I doing wrong?
Same here - I stopped stressing about it. DD is only 2.5 months, but I had bedtime issues with DS, too. With DD, if she doesn't go to sleep after 10 or 15 minutes of soothing, I set her down in her swing or playmat, let her chill, then try again a little later. I get little things done around the house while she's hanging out so that I don't get stressed out. I also started doing a little massage before getting her into her pjs. She went from 9:30/10:00 to 8:30-9:00, and is now going down closer to 8:00. She's tired by 7:00, but we haven't figured out how to do that when DS's bedtime is 7:30.
My daughter was the same at about 2months old. She just would not go to sleep between 7pm and 10pm. Then we realized she was overtired. We started putting her down for 6:20 and she has been on that routine for over 3 months now. She goes down very easily just before 6:20...if we try to push that later then, even by 20min, then she is melting down, exhausted and up for a long time with us trying everything to get her to sleep.
We follow her routine, and she is very routine (takes after her engineer daddy). For many months now she goes down for 6:20 and aside from waking for quick feeds she sleeps until 6:30am when my husband wakes her...she spends 45min with him as she eats and gets ready for work then he puts her in bed with me and she sleeps with me for another 1.5hrs or thereabouts. I have my husband wake her in early morning since she is at her happiest then and he would other wise only see her for about 30minutes before going to bed at night. They love this one on one time.
Anyways, as a few others have said try putting baby down really early, before they show any signs of being tired. Also, my daughter still only goes 1.5hrs between naps, max. And on days when she has a last later nap she may wake up at 5:30 but she still goes down for the night by 6:20. While it means we don't have a lot of family time in evenings we know how incredibly important sleep is for brain development...and mood in young children so we are continuing with the routine she has created for herself.