bed time for a 1 month old

[jenrett]

My LO is 1 month and 1 day old. He gets fussy in the evenings, which I know is normal, but sometimes I wonder if it is because we go to bed late. I just started trying to get him into bed earlier, like 8 or 8:30. I'm wondering, what is a "normal" bedtime for someone this young?

Also, a couple of nights ago I put him down on my bed (we cosleep) and went into the other room to work. He woke up pretty quickly and cried....so my initial experiment with putting him down early and then coming to bed later failed. Since then I have just been going to sleep when he does, esp. because I nurse him to sleep in a side lying position. It's just so easy to go to sleep then. Is this a normal problem or should I be able to get him to sleep the first part of the night without me?

[katelove]

J is 6 weeks old and we co-sleep as well She usually has a sleep from about 8pmish til 11pmish then from midnightish til 3amish. Some nights we try to go to bed shortly after she goes to sleep at 8 other nights we are up until the 11pm feed then we go to bed. If we stay up then she sleeps either on one of us or on the lounge next to one or both of us. We've never put her into bed on her own.

It doesn't seem to make a difference to her either way but, obviously, we get more sleep with the earlier bedtime. I think sometimes she would stay asleep on her own in bed but often she needs to be on one of us.

I think it's pretty normal for this age to need mum or dad nearby but as we are doing a modified "in arms" phase we didn't plan for her to be on her own at all so it doesn't bother us. I guess it would be pretty frustrating if you were counting on some alone time in the evening.

[GuavaGirl]

At that age, I never had an actual bed time for my little guy. It was pretty much just an around the clock cycle of him being awake for 30 minutes to an hour and a half (including feeding time) and then back to sleep, especially if I saw any signs of tiredness. (yawning, spacing out, fussiness even if he'd been fed and changed, etc.)

When he had the night time fussies, I thought that it meant he was hungry or that something was wrong (wondering if I was eating something wrong), until I realized that I had just been keeping him up too long, and at that age he doesn't just fall asleep as soon as he's tired, but he needed help to fall asleep with swaddling, rocking, and then some white noise in the bedroom. Mine slept around 15 hours a day at that time, once I realized that I needed to be more aware of his tiredness and even help him go to sleep even if it was just the clock telling me to.

The Happiest Baby on the Block was very helpful during this time.

[XanaduMama]

Neither of mine developed a "bedtime" until around 2.5mo. Up until then, it was the standard 2-odd hour wakings around the clock.

Your supply tends to dip in the evenings due to hormone fluctuations. Maybe he's hungry and you should try feeding him more often?

You could try wearing him in the evening, to see if the darkness and closeness help him settle. Or try putting him down swaddled. Just some thoughts.

[GuavaGirl]

As for putting him to bed before you go to bed, swaddling and then rocking to sleep until he's good and asleep....and then having white noise in the bedroom has really helped. His pacifier helps too.

[Knitting Mama]

Yeah, I don't think we had a "bedtime" yet at that point-- it was still getting up to nurse every couple of hours, so I generally dozed on the couch with her on my lap nursing. We rarely went to the bed, because we were waking up so often that I was worried about my husband not being able to get up for work for all the disturbances!

By two months old we had a more regular schedule, and now at three months old, we go to bed around 9 and sleep til 5-6.

[trghig]

With my first (2yr old) and now my second (4 months) I don't really start working on a bed time till closer to a year. By about 6 months my first had found his own bedtime and then I moved it up earlier to a more reasonable hour as he got older.

[jenfl]

Up until about 1.5-2 months, DS didn't have much of a firm bedtime. He just hung out with us until he conked out.

But at 1.5-2 months, he started getting REALLY fussy in the evenings, and we just couldn't keep him awake anymore. He started conking out early (7-8pm), so we'd just lay him in the crib when we he asleep on us in the rocking chair, and that became his bedtime. Then we put his bedtime routine in front of his natural bedtime. Now, at 3 months, 7pm is ingrained as his bedtime (after his and DD's bedtime routine).

[ThisCat]

We just winged it at that age. Sometimes my daughter used to fall asleep in the sling in the early evening and stayed there until I was ready for bed. But most evenings were spent with me sitting on the sofa with the lights off watching TV with a snoozing/nursing baby on my lap until I was ready for bed.
Somewhere around 2 months they both showed a preference for a 7(ish)pm bedtime which meant I got a couple of hours without a baby attached to me.

[Plummeting]

I don't think his fussiness has anything to do with when you go to bed. Babies that age rarely go to bed at any set time anyway, and when they do, as often as not it's midnight. Both of my DD's were babies that went to bed late as newborns - after 11 or 12 most nights, until a couple months old. The first one was never fussy at all, the second one is very fussy, no matter when she goes to sleep.

[confustication]

My nine month old still isn't ready for a bedtime... he is starting to more consistently conk out at about 7-8pm for a nap that I suspect will soon transition to bedtime, but he's not there yet.

At 1 month? Bedtime was whenever the baby fell asleep. Since all three were evening marathon nursers/fussers- we all fell into bed at about 10-11pm most nights.

[LaydieBugs]

Yeah I have a 6 week old ... and I'm not sure there's a lot you can do about his schedule.

DS developed his own schedule very quickly: we're "in bed" about 10:30 but I don't get to set him down from feeding and snuggling until about 12:30. Then he's up at 3 and 5. If we're out late and that snuggle time starts later, he still needs a full 2 hours of it before I can set him down -- but trying to start it earlier doesn't change anything.

He'll nap a lot up until falling fully asleep at 12:30 but will object to it being alone. Newborns need a lot of physical contact, it helps them organize their nervous systems, and as others have alluded to it takes a lot of this "organization" to go to sleep deeply. They can't self-regulate at this point and need active or passive coaching for their brains to learn stuff like what to do when sleepy (remember a month ago even automatic temperature adjusting wasn't possible).

Consider that you're not just soothing, but teaching, when you stay with LO.

Or I could be wrong!

[Knitting Mama]

I don't think you're wrong at all!

[tzs]

we also didn't have a bedtime at 1 month. no way.
strangely enough dd has always developed her own "schedule" which totally mirrors what the sleep books suggest (so maybe they do know what they are talking about!)
i think until about 2 or 3 months she would go to sleep really late. 10 or 11 at night. and then at the age when the "experts" recommend pushing the bedtime drastically up to 8ish (i think it was 3 months) she did it on her own. at a certain point she just could not stay up past 8 or 9. and that's where we still are today at 9 months. honestly i could push it earlier to 7ish with some adjustment on the naps and waking time but i SAH so i'd rather she go to bed later and wake up a little later.

don't worry. althought it's great to educate yourself, as much as you try to plan these things out and do the right thing, it seems like they know exactly what to do.

[elmh23]

Not until our babes were around 6 or 7 months would I try putting them down for bed at a "normal" bedtime. Until then, I'd keep babe in arms for the night and put them in bed when I go to bed. Ds2 (4 months) falls asleep usually around 7 for an hour and then gets up for another hour or two, then falls asleep on my lap. Then we go to bed whenever (usually around 10, but sometimes not until 1.) It works well for us.

[jenrett]

thanks! I do not mind having DS on my lap/in a sling all evening. I just wasn't sure if that was a bad habit to get into.....Sounds like we are right on track.

Honestly, though, I am so exhausted, that I often go to bed at 8 or 9 with DS!!! At first it was 11 or 12 but we've pushed our bedtimes up a bit....

[Kmama2]

Originally Posted by jenrett

thanks! I do not mind having DS on my lap/in a sling all evening. I just wasn't sure if that was a bad habit to get into.....Sounds like we are right on track.

Honestly, though, I am so exhausted, that I often go to bed at 8 or 9 with DS!!! At first it was 11 or 12 but we've pushed our bedtimes up a bit....

I think we try to get into a routine bedtime around 3 months or so... But ds was always super fussy from 4 pm on so I would try to get him to conk out around 6ish and we would hold him till 930ish when we went to bed.
He is 9 months now and like clockwork goes to bed around 6-30 pm.
I think they are supposed to get about 12 hours of nightime sleep ( older babies) yours is still to young and probably sleeping tons every day yet.

[CookAMH]

I can't address the waking issue because we don't co-sleep, but DS is in bed by 8 and I have noticed lately that he sleeps a little later in the morning if he's in bed even a little earlier.