Bedtime: How early is too early?

seanswife · January 2009

OK, so DD (3 months old) hardly naps during the day unless DH holds her on the couch with her paci.

For the past 4 days, we've been getting her to sleep in her crib at night. Before that, she would sleep in a bassinette in our room. So far, we've seen great progress with night sleep...last night she went down at about 8:15 after getting overtired and VERY fussy (it took us almost 2 hours to get her down), and she slept 8 hours, woke to feed, and then went back down for a few more hours. We were ecstatic.

So after that we decided that she needs to go to bed earlier. We noticed that she started to get tired around 5:30 PM, and tonight wanted to start her routine as soon as we noticed her "signs" and before she got a chance to get crazy.

Well, after trying to get her down for 2 naps in her crib today, and she finally having 1 1-hour one on my DH and a teeny little snooze in the car, she started to get fussy around 4-4:30.

SO, my dilemma was, do we go ahead and get her down because clearly she is tired and we don't want a repeat of the struggle to get her down last night, OR do we try to keep her up for a LITTLE bit longer so she's not going to bed at 5 and possibly waking up 11-12 at night, and/or risking that we pass the point of no return like we did last night?

We are going to work on eliminating night feeding, but not until we have gotten her comfortable with her sleep schedule first!

TIA...

laceloni81 · January 2009

My DD goes to bed around 5pm-6pm. Then gets up around 1am to eat and then sleeps till 5am. We've tried to keep her up but she gets fussy and overtired. Last night was an odd night she stayed up till 7pm and slept all the way till 5am. I think her schedule is changing. I say if DC wants to sleep, let them sleep. Getting the point of overtired it so fun.

ibbym · January 2009

From about 6 months until almost 3 years old, DD went to bed around 6:00pm until about 5:30-6:00am. Until she was about 12 months old, she woke up once a night to eat.

She now goes to bed at 7:30.

GRKaters · January 2009

Why not let her nap one more time around 4 or 5? DS still does this. He's a great daytime napper! His last nap is 45min-1hr and starts between 4:30 and 5. I wouldn't put him to BED that early, though. Bedtime starts between 6 and 7, when he is showing signs. If we "think" it's too early, we'll sometimes give him a bath if he can deal with it--otherwise Mr. Cranky goes into the crib!

meh720 · January 2009

Oh God I remember this same dilemma. I hated it. My DD was a mess after 700 at night from birth but I never wanted to put her to bed bc it didn't make sense with feeding her a few more times. We used to let her nap in a swing as soon as the fussy time started and then we put her in bed around 10/1030 after another feeding. But now she just goes to bed around 7 bc we decided it wasn't worth the trouble of dealing with her so cranky in the evening when she just wanted to sleep. So my advice is - if you don't care about a good feeding schedule and will just feed her when she wakes during the night - put her to bed whenever. I just was trying to avoid a 1am feeding and was aiming for a 3 or 4 so wanted to keep her up until 10 or so.

auslyn804 · January 2009

What time is morning? I think that it seems nighttime tends to be around 12 hrs. So if getting up at 5-6am is ok, then going to bed that early works. If you don't want morning to be until 9 or so, then I'd try for a nap at 4-5 and then go down for the night later.

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