Moving bedtime earlier for 11 week old?

[Blanca78]

I know that babies tend to need earlier bedtimes starting around the 3-month mark, and I feel like my 11-week-old DD is starting to send signals that she's ready. But I just don't know how to move it earlier.

Right now, she is asleep pretty reliably between 10:30-11 pm. She'll sleep anywhere from 5-7 hours, nurse, and sleep for another couple hours. Naps are all over the place--some days she just cat naps, some days she'll sleep for 2-3 hours. On good days, she'll take a big nap in the late afternoon and not wake up until 6 or 7 p.m., which makes evenings a lot less fussy.

A lot of the time she doesn't really nap past 5 p.m. or so, which means that evenings involve several hours of crankiness that culminate in an overtired meltdown until she finally falls asleep.

The problem is, when we've tried to get her to sleep earlier, she will wake up after 20-60 minutes, and then it just delays the whole bedtime process. For example, I'll get her to sleep by 9:30, but then she wakes up at 10:00 and it's another 45 minutes or more of rocking, nursing, etc. to soothe her back down. It's really frustrating because she's OBVIOUSLY tired, but we seem stuck in this 11 p.m. groove.

How did you know when your kids were ready for an earlier bedtime? How did you get them to adjust to the new schedule--moving it incrementally forward, or what? I am just confused by how to do this smoothly. I don't want to force the issue, but the hours of overtiredness can't be right, and I'm worried she's not getting enough sleep. It's complicated by it still being light out and DH not getting home from work until 6:30 or sometimes later, plus dinner, etc.

ETA: I guess I have this fantasy of a peaceful, calming bedtime routine and easy transition to sleep, rather than a frantic maelstrom of running the vacuum cleaner, swaddling, bouncing, coaxing her to nurse a bit more...until she passes out from fatigue. But I don't know how much of the unpleasantness is a function of her age, or of overtiredness...I'm just stressed. Bedtimes are tough and then I feel all tense and wired, and can't sleep well myself. Help!

[DaisyMae08]

We moved our son's bedtime up by 15 minutes each night until we got to the best time for him (which is 7:30).  We started at 9pm, so it didn't take all that long to get to 7:30, but we had to adjust his nap schedule as well.  He would never have made it from 5pm to a late bedtime.  He's 6 months old now and usually wakes up from his last nap somewhere between 4:30 and 5 and that is just right for him for a 7:30pm bedtime.

[Strong Mama]

The twins used to go to sleep about 10 and on their own gradually moved it up. Now they go down about 6 30/7 and sleep through til 6 30/7. Once in a blue moon one twin will wake 30 mins after being laid down, and I just pick her up in the dark room and rock her back to sleep, takes about 20 mins tops. This is rare though.

[Skippy918]

My DD is 10 weeks old and I'm wondering when she'll settle in to an earlier bedtime also.  Right now she goes to sleep anywhere between 9 and 11pm.  She'll also sleep 5-7 hours, then eat and then stay up if the wake-up is after 7 or 8 am.  Naps are all over the place also and I'm also worried that she's not napping enough.  She will take a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon. 

A lot of the time she doesn't really nap past 5 p.m. or so, which means that evenings involve several hours of crankiness that culminate in an overtired meltdown until she finally falls asleep.

Same here.  It's frustrating.  Hopefully others have some advice.

[carmen358]

My DD didn't really start 'asking' to go to sleep earlier until she was about 6 months old or so. By early I mean around 8.

[Blanca78]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Skippy--sounds like we're in the exact same spot. Maybe it's just totally normal for this age? DD's naps are truly a crapshoot--I never know if it'll be 2 hours or 20 minutes. One blissful day this week she took TWO two-hour naps! I got so much done! But the rest of the time it's mostly 30-45 minute land with the occasional 1.5 hours thrown in. Night sleep is good, though, so for that I'm grateful.

StrongMama and others--how did your kids "tell" you it was time for an earlier bedtime? I guess my confusion is in that I can tell DD is very tired, but she doesn't go down for a long stretch until at least 10:00 usually (i.e., she'll fall asleep earlier, but then wake up again within the hour). Lately, however, it has been veeerrry slowly moving a bit earlier--this past week it's been more of a 9:30-10:30 thing rather than 10:00-11:00. I guess I have noticed a couple times when I was able to rock her right back down if she woke prematurely, too.