bedtime?

QOTR · June 2014

I'm being a PW this evening, but I had several random questions. This is the one I'm most befuddled by:

My LO is 4 1/2 weeks. He eats on demand, so our days still consist of a cycle of him waking to eat, eating and a diaper change before or after the feeding. A couple times a day, he'll stay awake between feedings and we'll "play" or he'll just observe his world, but most times he nurses to sleep again. His naps / sleeping is a mix of in the crib, in the swing or in our arms. Many of you mention bedtimes for your LOs. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or if my little guy is still too little, but we don't do anything differently to prepare for bedtime really. Since he mostly eats on demand and goes to sleep, the only difference between our day routine & night routine is that it is dark outside and he wears a sleeper instead of a onesie.

Tonight, we're going to switch his bath to evenings (still bathing every other day) so DH can start participating. We'll start reading books at some point (I have a little book I read during playtime now). But what else are you doing that you consider "putting baby to bed" at this point?

Thanks!

Junebug060609 · June 2014

What @anniemore‌ anniemore said.

My LO is 9w and our bedtime routine consists of her getting a sleeper put on and being swaddled up. She then gets nursed and burped, passes out, and is put down for the night. Her bath is done midday bc she has a rambunctious two year old brother I don't dare have share a bath with her yet.

usernewname · June 2014

Same. DS gets changed, put in his sleep sack, nursed, burp then passes out by 9 930. But he's done this since day 1 so I can't say how it happened.

apinkpelican · June 2014

@florassecret‌ after you put him down at 9, are you letting him sleep as long as he will? Or do you wake him to feed one last time before you go to sleep? Usually DD will eat around 8 and then will sleep some (usually on daddy while we watch tv)but I wake her to do a last 10/11 feeding before officially putting her down in her RNP when we will go to sleep too. Trying to decide if I need to start putting her to bed around 8 or if this matters at this point. She's 6weeks.

MrsT2008 · June 2014

Diaper change, swaddle, nurse. It was the same for DD1 until she was around a year when we started reading books. I am not one for long drawn out routines. The baby goes to bed around 7. That's when her long stretch of sleep starts (6 hours or so). Before I was getting that stretch, I still tried to have her in bed around that same time to help establish it. I did the same with DD1.

usernewname · June 2014

KellyQ116 said:
@florassecret‌ after you put him down at 9, are you letting him sleep as long as he will? Or do you wake him to feed one last time before you go to sleep? Usually DD will eat around 8 and then will sleep some (usually on daddy while we watch tv)but I wake her to do a last 10/11 feeding before officially putting her down in her RNP when we will go to sleep too. Trying to decide if I need to start putting her to bed around 8 or if this matters at this point. She's 6weeks.

DS sleeps for as long as he likes. He wakes between 12 and 1. Sometimes around 1130 if he slept a lot during the day. So we get about a 3-4hour stretch but the 4 is rare. Then it's every 2 hours until the sun comes up (around 530-6) then it's every hour ish. He likes to stock up at the beginning and end of his day.

If she's surpassed her birth weight or doctors.orders you don't need to wake her. Sometimes I wake before DS and I wait until he's ready. I would just put her in her bed at 8 then wait for her to call you for food.

He doesn't sleep like this during the day. It's usually on me he sleeps. But I get a good night so I don't complain. I try to.put him down in his bed after a while while he naps. I'm successful like 25% of the time.

apinkpelican · June 2014

@florassecret‌ should have clarified... Once I put her down at 10/11 I let her sleep for as long as she will (and cross my fingers for an extended sleep). Basically by feeding her this last time I'm trying to only have one MOTN feeding and am trying to be sleeping myself during her longest sleep. So if I feed her around 10/10:30 we are asleep by 11. We have a MOTN feeding around 2am, then she'll sleep again till 5:30 usually (if we are lucky she'll go longer). She won't always go back to sleep unfortunately at 5:30. I'm thinking that I need to start transitioning 1) into her room and 2) to an earlier 'official' bedtime.

letal316 · June 2014

My DD (almost 8 weeks) goes down between 8:30 and 9:30pm after a diaper change, sleeper change, and feeding and she sleeps between 6-1/2 to 8hours. We're not necessarily doing anything different than when she goes down for naps during the day (except for the sleeper) but we had worked on differentiating between day and night right from the get go and apparently it stuck because she goes down like clockwork and sleeps a much more significant stretch than she ever would during the day.

usernewname · June 2014

Ah @KellyQ116

I'm not sure what your asking then

Yeah we have the 530 thing too ... we found pulling the blinds and keeping the room dark gives us some extra time. Otherwise when the sun is up he's ready to paaaaarty. I try to keep him room dark too for naps, not ideal for day-time-night-time but it helps.

britab · June 2014

Our DD goes to bed about 10 when we do. She'll do a final nursing, diaper change, swaddle and then put her in the rnp. She usually does a 4 hour stretch and then 2-3 hour stretch(es). When she sleeps longer we might put her down earlier but now we are sleeping when she does!

manna1212 · June 2014

We give ds at bottle of bm between 8:30-9:00. Before giving him his bottle we change, put on pj's. After bottle we burp. Ds has reflux so he then sits upright for about twenty minutes, either in our arms or on our chest. Then we swaddle and put him down once he falls asleep. We also keep the lights low for bedtime.

CJPowers · June 2014

Babies this little don't need an official bedtime in my opinion. I usually feed DS (5 weeks) while DD (2 year old) is watching a show at 7:00pm, then I take them up for a bath together, then I put them both in jammies, read books (while DS sits in bouncy seat), then I sing a few songs and put DD in her crib. I take DS downstairs with me and watch my TV shows or check email, he falls asleep in swing or in my lap. I feed DS at 10/11 before I go to bed. I wake him up no matter what for this feeding. This "dream feed" is critical. I don't want to go to sleep at 11 and have him wake me up at midnight hungry. It will be a long time before I drop this dream feeding. I am aiming for him to sleep from 10-6 which would be his long stretch and it will hopefully be when I am sleeping.

lauralou3x3 · June 2014

@anniemore‌ , do you also use Gerber Soothe formula? I've been looking into trying that. Didn't know they had the probiotics

gutsysneakers · June 2014

How did you guys push back bedtime? Dd is usually wide awake between 5-9 pm. We feed last time around 10 and she's out by 10:30/11 and sleeps until 3/4am for MOTN and back down until 6/7 for breakfast. She usually takes a long nap for 2-3 hours any time between 11:30-4pm.

Do I just adjust everything back a few hours? Yesterday I tried a routine if you will. Starting at 8, I bathed her, did baby massage, nursed and burped her and listened to piano music for 10 min while I rocked her. While drowsy, I put her in the cosleeper. By this time it was almost 9. She never fell asleep until after another feeding at 10. Should I just stick to this routine? I know I can't spoil her and it's impossible to set a schedule for her. I just don't want to be setting us up for failure later. Thoughts?

apinkpelican · June 2014

@florassecret‌ guess I'm just curious if you did a final feeding before you go to bed. I want to put DD down earlier but want to take advantage of the longer sleep period. If I fed her last at 8/9 I probably wouldn't take full advantage of it and I know once the babies get older 7/8 is a typical bedtime. Guess I could go to bed earlier!

mileswithmyles · June 2014

LO is 6 weeks old. We do a bath around 9 PM and then put him in his Pjs. I BF him and then he goes in the PnP. We keep the lights low or off in the house during this time. If he fusses a little, we read a story quietly and try the pacifier.

usernewname · June 2014

KellyQ116 said:
@florassecret‌ guess I'm just curious if you did a final feeding before you go to bed. I want to put DD down earlier but want to take advantage of the longer sleep period. If I fed her last at 8/9 I probably wouldn't take full advantage of it and I know once the babies get older 7/8 is a typical bedtime. Guess I could go to bed earlier!

Oh yes! DS falls asleep nursing at night!

QOTR · June 2014

Thanks for the feedback.

flockofmoosen3 · June 2014

I'm probably in the minority, but LO is 6 weeks today and we are still planning to continue with her 9 - 9:30p bedtime. My husband gets home from work around 5:30p, and then we hang out and eat dinner or whatever and if we put her to bed before 8p my husband would get no time to spend with her. LO still falls asleep officially btwn 10:30 and 11:30, but then she is out until 4:30a. Then she feeds every 2-3 hours until she officially wakes up at 10a. I love this schedule.

During the day she takes some very short naps and one long nap. Our bedtime routine includes a bath every third night, then pj's, nursing to soothe her crying cause she hates bath time, and nursing her to sleep in a very dark and quiet room. I put her down when I know she is fully asleep.

spinsoffresonance · June 2014

DD is 7w. The last few weeks She has been cOnsistently cluster feeding from 6-10pm. She usually ends up falling asleep at the breast sometime between 9-10pm and sleeps til 1pm. I can now tell when she starts getting fussy around 9-10pm that she's done with the day and it's time for her to go to sleep. So she gets changed, goes in the sleepsack, lights off, white noise on and nurses side lying until asleep. I'll fall asleep then too!

So far we've been bed sharing but as of last night I'm working on putting her in the cosleeper after she's down. Once I have her consistently sleeping the night in the cosleeper I'll try to introduce a bedtime routine that doesn't involve falling asleep at the boob. DD1's bedtime routine consists of bath with me, diaper, pj, snuggle time with me, story with DH, white noise on, DH rocks her while singing a song and down in the crib awake with her music box.

Make sure both you and DH participate in the bedtime routine. We had a big problem with DD1 because I was the one putting her to bed for naps and every night. After a while she wouldn't go to sleep for DH, so we had to modify our bedtime routine to both take part in it to make sure she would go down for either one of us.

sparklingdiamond · June 2014

DS is 7 weeks and has just this past week or so been consistently going to sleep around 9-9:30. He usually wakes up around 1-1:30 and then again between 4-5:30ish.

whitehousem · June 2014

The twins usually eat sometime between 6:30 and 7:30pm. Then we swaddle them in their sleep sacks and put them to bed awake in their RnPs with white noise. Sometimes one or both needs to be comforted but they usually both fall asleep. We wake them at 10:30 and keep the lights low and change and feed them. They go back down by 11pm and we go to sleep. One usually starts stirring around 2am and I get them both and feed them in our loft. Then I put them in their room to sleep in bouncy chairs (they start in our room). They are noisy sleepers so this helps us get more sleep. They wake between 5am and 6am... Sometimes not til close to 7 if we are lucky. If they wake early then we feed them and put them in their swings and they go back to sleep for a couple hours. The goal is to get to 7pm-7am sleeping like DD. They are 8weeks.

Arinias · June 2014

Currently we don't have a set routine but we have a bit of a baby-led schedule. He usually gets fussy between 7-8 after eating but usually goes down around then. Sometimes he goes to sleep later though. Typically he will wake up between 10-11:30 for one more feeding. This is when DH and I go to bed so we change him, put him in pjs, I nurse and he goes down until around 6am. I nurse and usually can get him back to sleep from 7a-9a. Sometimes I squish in an extra hour or so nap for both of us depending on how awake he is and how tired I am. By 10a we are up for the day. Eventually I will start trying to get his official bedtime to 8, but for now it works for him to nap where convenient and then put him to bed when we go upstairs for the night. That way I can take full advantage of his long stretch. These times are kind of approximated and vary quite a bit though. The other night we were at a friends and I didn't get him to sleep until after 9p, so then we did our late night feeding around 12:30. It does seem like he will wake up around 6a one way or another though, which I am fine with. I definitely appreciate the long stretch!

tbiscuit18 · July 2014

@Jcrewgirl85‌ our routine is almost identical to yours. Except last night we got lucky and DS kind of put himself down at 930. I'm wondering if after the 6 week mark they start adjusting better? Right now I'm ok with the later bedtime, but I'm sure that will change.

danagmauro · July 2014

Bath at 7...nurse...swaddle...whimper...asleep in rnp by 8.

Motn feed between 2-3

Up at 6 then 8 and up for the day around 10/11.

Fantastic night sleeper... Working on day

ho11yday · July 2014

DS2 is 6 weeks today. He cluster feeds between 9 and 11p and then sleeps from 1130p to about 630a. He'll wake up again for an hour and then sleep for another 3 hours. After that, most naps are about 3 hours long and he'll be up for about 2 hours between naps.

caycelee · July 2014

We are just starting to try some sort of routine in hopes of longer sleep periods. We give a pumped bottle or bf, change diaper, swaddle and bounce to sleep on yoga ball. I'm hoping his 6 week spurt has come and gone so it doesn't screw up anything so soon but if it does oh well. Every other night he gets a bath around 6 as well.

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