February 2016 Moms
charliegoldengirl
member
Bedtime
charliegoldengirl
member
If this has been discussed, please point me to the right threads!
I feel like I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing for bedtime. I can't remember when we started a routine and set bedtime with my older son (not that it helped much, he has always been a bad sleeper). I feel like I should be doing that now but I've really been struggling getting baby to go to bed in his crib (and stay asleep there for any amount of time). Why aren't babies born knowing how to sleep?!
Baby boy is 3 months old this week. My questions are:
1. What time is bedtime for your little one?
2. How long does baby sleep? (Am I the only one with a baby who wakes every 3 hours?)
3. Do you follow a set bedtime routine?
I feel like I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing for bedtime. I can't remember when we started a routine and set bedtime with my older son (not that it helped much, he has always been a bad sleeper). I feel like I should be doing that now but I've really been struggling getting baby to go to bed in his crib (and stay asleep there for any amount of time). Why aren't babies born knowing how to sleep?!
Baby boy is 3 months old this week. My questions are:
1. What time is bedtime for your little one?
2. How long does baby sleep? (Am I the only one with a baby who wakes every 3 hours?)
3. Do you follow a set bedtime routine?
Re: Bedtime
2. He will be passed out just about every night by 8:30pm and sleeps til about 6am. He did have a couple weeks where he'd sleep 8:30pm-7:30/8am but has decided 6am is a good time to wake up lately.
3. We do have a set bedtime routine in which we head upstairs to his room, turn lights down low, change diaper, use a washcloth to wipe his face and neck, baby massage with aquaphor (he loooves this), PJs, swaddle, nurse (in our bed), and then crib with white noise in his room. He is happy through the entire thing until his PJs get on then he starts fussing I think because he knows what is coming next (nursing and sleep).
2. DISCLAIMER: my baby is not normal, so please don't get discouraged. She typically sleeps 10-12 hours straight at night. I say this not because I'm a baby whisperer and not because I'm bragging, but just because it's the truth. Babies are all different and it's all typically normal
3. At 8:30 we take her to her room and get her undressed and in a new diaper. We put her in a sleep sack or jammies and give her vitamin D. If she's hungry, I'll nurse her while dad reads us a story. If she's not, I'll just hold her and rock her until she's asleep. Then I put her down. That's really it. We try and keep things dark and minimize loud noises in the hour or so leading up to bedtime so she's more relaxed. We give her a bath every 3rd night and then start our routine after some naked baby snuggles
as far as our routine we do a bath with bed time back and lotion down stairs . Give hugs and kisses to daddy/big sis (unless it's a night I'm at work then daddy does all this) we go up we out on our sleep sack. She eats and I put her down drowsy. Sometimes she fusses but I don't let her fuss more then 15-20 minutes before going back in to sooth her . Unless she's hysterical then I go right in. She's usually a great sleeper she usually sleeps until 3 then down till 7. The past week she's been waking a little more frequent but she's almost four months and I swear she's teething but we are sticking to routine and I'm confident it will get better .
sorry for the long post ! Hope it gets better soon just stick with what you want your routine to be and don't give up it will click !!
2. She sleeps usually until around 3, then sometimes will go back sleep until 5 or 6, then sleeps on me in the glider after that. DD1 was up every 3-4hrs forever. At least a year, if not longer.
3. Around 7, she gets in jammies and I nurse her or snuggle on the couch (with DD1). When she seems ready for sleep, I take her into her room, lights dim, and nurse her to sleep in the glider.. Which frequently takes an hour of nursing, burping, fussing, dozing, nursing some more, etc. After she's asleep, I put her in the RnP in our room.
I feed him once more before I go to sleep usually around 9 or 9:30. He just eats and goes right back down. Then it's kind of a crap shoot how long he'll sleep after that. But lately we're getting closer to 5 am a little more consistently. My goal will ultimately be to feed him at 8pm and have him make it til 6. Anyway, he goes right back to sleep til 6 or 7 after I feed him then we're up at 6 or 7 with 6 being what the new wakeup time will probably be due to me going back to work.
For what it's worth your baby should definitely be going longer then every 3 hrs at night. He or she is probably stuck on that pattern and just repeating it. That's not really conducive to you getting any sleep and if your baby is healthy then I'd be taking steps to make baby go longer. For you but also for your baby. It's important they learn how to sleep too. Have you tryed putting in a binky instead of feeding? Not sure how you feel about cio but I would say baby should be going 6 hrs minimally by now. Good luck to you. No sleep is so brutal!
2. She will typically sleep til 3:00 or 3:30am, eat, then sleep til 6:00-7:00am depending on DH alarm and how light she's sleeping. She's still in our room in a RnP bc we had some scares with spit up/choking in her crib on a different floor.
3. Some nights we will do a bath. But every night (and all throughout the day) we do lotion/coconut oil bc she has eczema I can't get rid of. Then I usually alternate rocking/bouncing on yoga ball/nursing her depending on if she's full or not to get her to go to sleep.
We've tried reading books and she has cried everytime since she was born that we've tried so we gave up on that even though everyone says it's so good for them. She must have inherited her fathers hatred of books lol
2. DD sleeps roughly until 430-5 so we get about 7-8hrs in the first stretch, then she eats and usually goes down again for another 3-4hr stretch and is up for the day between 8-930am. She sleeps in her pack n play in our room for the first stretch and in her co-sleeper in my bed for the second, since DH leaves for work at 5am
3. Usually we do bath, bottle, bed although some nights we don't do a bath if DH gets home late. DH almost always feeds her the before bed bottle so she usually falls asleep in his arms shortly after eating and we wait about 20 minutes before bringing her up and putting her down. We also use a white noise machine which I turn on after we put her in her pack n play to make sure she goes off into a deep sleep instead of waking in 40 minutes (which she does when we put her down to nap during the day)
we've been lucky that DD is a very good sleeper naturally so we haven't had to do any sleep training yet - even as a newborn she would usually go down pretty easily with a bedtime song and some cuddles/rocking. I've just been able to follow her cues and let her lead the way with sleeping, I do think that co-sleeping with her while she was a newborn, and room sharing now has helped her distinguish her days and nights since she's pretty used to me sleeping near her the entire time she sleeps. I also make sure she gets all her feedings in during the day (about 6 5oz bottles, eating every 2 1/2-3 hrs) so we rarely have a need for a MOTN feed anymore. I'm dreading the transition to the crib because I feel that will screw up her routine, but we plan to room share at least until 6 months so that's future me's problem lol
Approximately 9:00 PM. Preferably somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00 PM, because he tends to sleep 5-6 hours for his first stretch and only in 1.5-2 hour increments after that. I can handle those shorter increments much better the later he goes down for his long stretch of sleep. Occasionally he misses his last nap of the day and goes down early, but those nights tend to be rough for me, even if he ends up getting the same amount of sleep as usual. Mainly because my sleep gets split up into just those shorter increments and it's pretty brutal. I'm sure your LO sleeping only 3 hours at a time is starting to grate.
His first stretch of night sleep is 5-6 hours. After that it's 1.5-2 hour increments for the rest of the night. It's what his daytime napping schedule is, too, except for a longer 2-3 hour nap in the early afternoon.
Yes, unless he goes down early due to a missed nap. Aiming for a 9:00 PM bedtime, I start getting him ready around 8 PM (if he's getting a bath) or 8:30 PM (if it's not a bath day). We do a bath + coconut oil rub or a warm wash cloth, change into PJs, then sit in the bedroom with curtains closed and lights dimmed. We'll read a bedtime story and sing a few songs, and we talk to him with soft voices only. I tend to nurse him to sleep or at least into a super drowsy state, then put him in his crib. Sometimes a messed up nap schedule can ruin this routine, though. When I try NOT to nurse him to sleep, it also tends to be a disaster. Last time I gave that a try we were up until midnight, so eff that. Nursing to sleep it is.
2. Her first stretch is somewhere between 5 and 8 hours. She was doing 7-10
hours but I wanted to get her out of the rock n play before I got used to that and she's doing pretty well in the pack n play next to our bed. We're moving next Saturday into my mom's house for a month before we move into our first house (and hopefully never move again), so I'm not transitioning her to her own room until we move again at the end of June. Her naps are in her crib or the pack n play and range from 20-40 minutes. I think I was keeping her up too long in between them so now I aim for 1.5 hours max of awake time (and less if she's being really crabby). She's done a longer nap in the afternoon a couple of times and then is a delight for over 2 hours afterwards! She'll also sometimes wake from a nap but not really be awake. I can pat and shush her back to sleep--this is usually how the long naps happen. It usually doesn't work but because she's so much happier after, I try it every time.
3. Our routine is pretty simple. We read a couple of Sandra Boynton books, swaddle and then I nurse her to sleep or to near sleep. She's woken up a couple of times after I've transferred her. She sometimes coos to herself (like for 20+ minutes--my mom was over yesterday and said I did the same thing) and then falls asleep. This morning she cooed for at least 30 minutes and had enough and yelled. I'm trying to stop myself from going in when I hear her (when she's not crying) so she can figure things out for herself. She won't take a pacifier or a bottle so nursing to sleep (or to very drowsy) is really important for us!
2. How long does baby sleep? (Am I the only one with a baby who wakes every 3 hours?) He usually will sleep about 4 -6 hours, then 3 hours, then until it's time to get up for the day. Sometimes it is every 3 hours. It's frustrating.
3. Do you follow a set bedtime routine? Starting at 7 (because that's when he starts losing his shit), we take a bath if it's bath night, then put on jammies, swaddle, if it's warm enough we go outside and nurse while listening to Clair de Lune. If it's not nice enough outside, we go sit in his room.
2) His longest strech of sleep is between 11pm and 4am. From 4am to 8:30-9am it's a free for all, i typically remove him from the crib and just feed him in the bed since I'm EBF it just makes it easier on everyone.
3) We don't have a set bedtime routine it's what ever works on that night. I nurse him to sleep if he is cranky I put on some classic soul music and we slow dance together until he calms down and I can nurse him again. If none of that works I put him in my Moby wrap and we exercise; squats, lunges wall sits crazy right! But, it works idk if it's my heart rate or breathing not sure but it knocks him out. Lol
2. She usually sleep from 830 until 430-5, then she's up for feeding and back down until 730. This last week she started waking up at 2am randomly but I attributed it to a growth spurt because she's back to the 430-5 time frame.
3. We start her bedtime routine at 730 with a bath, then massage and some songs and then a 6oz bottle and into her crib with white noise. We both do bathtime and DH always does night bottle unless he's working.
I was afraid to move her to the crib at first too, we finally decided it was time at about 9weeks when none of us were sleeping very well in the same room. We would get her nice and tightly swaddled with her arms out and have the white noise going. She woke up still in the middle of the night for about a week, then she just seemed to figure it out and slept until 430am. We've stopped swaddling all together now and she's still sleeping.
One of the big tricks for us was just sticking to the routine and making sure that her last feeding was a little bit more (6oz instead of 5). I hope you guys can get there soon, getting to sleep 6hrs in a row never felt so amazing!
I keep bringing him in our room and putting him back in the rock k n play around 11 or 11:30 (after 3 hrs of waking every 40ish mins in his crib). I wonder if I just need to be consistent and keep him in the crib. I'm so tired!
Weve been working king on the drowsy but awake- sometimes he will put himself to sleep and other times not so much.