Bedtime Routines

[StrongFeather]

Hi there!

I am a first time Mommy, we bedshare with our DS, Sam who came a tad early at 36 weeks. He's 3 months now and I am just realized that we have absolutely no schedule going for bedtime, and as a result my LO is a bit sleep deprived So the past week I have been working on getting him down for naps and trying to work on a plan for a bedtime routine.

I am looking for some ideas, suggestions, or just plain how you do things in your house.

How do you handle the fact that some nights everybody goes to bed early, and then on the weekends Mommy and Daddy might want to stay up?

[tykys]

Sorry, no advice for you because we're dealing with the same thing. Our family is not very "scheduled" in any aspect so it's very challenging when you cosleep. Sometimes I want to go to bed at 10, and other nights not until 2am. It will (hopefully) become more regimented when I go back to work in January.

DS usually naps in the Infant Seat in our living room throughout the day, then at nighttime we have tried moving it into our room (before we are ready to go to bed), but it's not working that great. At night he likes to cuddle and be close to me, so if I'm not ready to go to bed yet, he's usually in my arms. DS was also here early (33w6d) and had to spend 3 weeks in the NICU, so I know he needs the cuddling as much as I do haha.

[Louisep]

We went to bed with DS at 9pm until he was about 3 months and then his bedtime started to naturally get earlier, so we started putting DS to bed and staying up. We made the bed safe and had a monitor so felt comfortable leaving him alone.

At 3 months my DS still needed lots of naps and he only stayed awake about 90 minutes, perhaps less, it's hard to remember! I stayed close to home in those days to make sure he napped, otherwise he was miserable. He napped in my arms until about 5 months old, then I napped beside him on the bed.

Our bedtime routine from about 3 months was a bath and a walk in a carrier. I don't actually think the routine has meant anything to him until now, at ten months. He now also can sit still enough to look at some books together, so we've incorporated that and dropped the walk since he's heavy and it's cold. Bedtime for us has always fluctuated depending on when his last nap ended to make sure he was sufficiently sleepy, but I've always tried to get naps in on some kind of a schedule so that bedtime is always around the same time each night (between 6 and 7pm).

Some people are way less structured and that works for them and their baby. Our DS is high needs and he responds so much better to this kind of structure. Naps are VITAL to our LO and I plan our days around them, always have.

You will figure out what works for your LO and your family life. My only advice would be try not to stress too much about it. I was way too "a type" about it and am only just now starting to relax and it feels much less stressful!

[GracieP]

new schedule followers

Our DS is 14 months and just a few months ago we started a serious schedule. I've always been so go-with-the-flow from birth (so my mom says) so it was hard to make and stick to a schedule but my son needs it! Our schedule:

7am wake
breakfast 8-9am
lunch 12-1pm
nap 1-2:30
dinner 5-6
bedtime routine 6-7

Our routine:
1. read books
2. bath
3. diaper/pajamas
4. brush teeth
5. nurse - he usually nurses and crawls around at this point until he gets tired and goes to sleep

He wakes up a lot at night, but the schedule helps so much. He used to go to sleep at 10:30/11pm after a battle. It took us a long time to get our acts together.

We also co-sleep, but we just get him to sleep and leave the room until our bedtime. Sometimes he wakes up before we come to bed so I go in and help him get back to sleep.

I am a huge schedule fan now. Not everyone needs one like we do, but it helps us a lot.

[FiveLittleMonkeys]

Around here, we call the bedtime routine the B's of Bedtime....Bath, Book, Boob, Bed. My son will be 6 mo next week, and he thrives on this routine. He doesn't always sleep the best at night, but goes down easily when we've done the routine and hit the ideal timing of it.

[lifeguard]

For us, although I started trying to instill a bedtime routine at about that point it didn't seem to make any impact on him until he was about 12.5 months. So a bedtime routine is not a magic make baby fall asleep solution for everyone.

[mambera]

Try
The 90-Minute Baby Sleep Program: Follow Your Child's Natural Sleep Rhythms for Better Nights and Naps

by Polly Moore