Bedtimes? « Back to Group Discussions

[ReadingRenee]

Anyone have a consistent bedtime for their baby yet?  I feel like we are still all over the place over here.  For a while putting her to bed around 8- 830 is great and then suddenly she wakes up after being put to bed and is wide awake for 2hours and won't go back to sleep til at least 10 30 or so.  We have a consistent wake up time and naps so its hard to figure out.  I wonder if I am putting her to bed too early?  Everything I read says early bedtime is best but that doesn't seem to work for us so far.  Maybe she is too young?

What is everyone else doing for bedtime for their LO?

[RosieL]

Odin moved his bedtime from 9:30 to 7:30 in the span of a month or less. We had mostly just been reading his sleepy signs (yawn, eye-rubbing). He is 4 mo now...

[chiromama01]

Collin goes down between 8 and 8:30 fairly consistently.  He is 4 months now as well. 

[CarlyVHT]

Bedtime is the one thing we have been consistant about from early on. Both kids go to bed at 8, but I think Grady actually needs to be asleep by 7:30. I'm going to work on starting bedtime for both of them earlier tonight since I know Ada will need to be up earlier and ready for Kindergarten in only TWO weeks. I'm going to try for 7:30 for Grady and 7:45 for Ada tonight and see how that goes....

[daylicious]

Holden goes down between 8:00 and 8:30. The odd night he'll throw us a curve ball, but generally he sticks to a regular time. What time do you all do naps at? Anything regular yet?

[ReadingRenee]

Originally Posted by daylicious 

Holden goes down between 8:00 and 8:30. The odd night he'll throw us a curve ball, but generally he sticks to a regular time. What time do you all do naps at? Anything regular yet?

Thanks for all the replies everyone.  We generally have naps 2 hours after waking up all day long, so about 4 naps. sometimes she is only awake for an hour and a half between naps.  Her naps usually last 45 minutes to an hour except for the second nap is usually about two hours long.  I generally put her down for bed after her fourth nap of the day. (that nap is usually only 30  -40 minutes)  Depending on when she gets up for the day that is usually around 8ish or 9ish.  I have'nt been able to do a absolutely consistent bedtime because Im not sure when she will get up from her last nap of the day or how it will all work out.  Do you guys think I should just do a bedtime no matter when she woke up from her last nap?  I feel like I put her down and she will ALWAYS wake up within 30 minutes to an hour after that and sometimes be perfectly happy to nurse and go back to sleep but sometimes, (like tonight) she is wide awake and thinks she just had another nap and is up for at least two hours.  WIDE awake.  We have a bedtime routine and have had one since she was about 6 weeks old.

ETA:  DD is 15 weeks old, will be 16 weeks this Saturday.  So not quite 4 months.

[CarlyVHT]

For naps, we're aiming for a 1.5-2hr one in the morning (9-11), another in the afternoon (1-3) and a 30 minute catnap from 6-6:30. That is on an ideal day. We've just allowed him to fall into his own routine and this seems to be it. It doesn't always happen, though - if we are out and about, doing activities with DD, etc, the  naps don't always last as long or happen at the right times for him. Plus, DH isn't quite as good as I am at reading his early sleeiness cues :) But on an ideal day (today was one of them!) this seems to be the routine.

[daylicious]

Carly: our nap schedule is almost exactly the same.
Holden gets up at 8:00 on the dot pretty much every morning. He's usually only awake for 1-1.5 hours before he starts rubbing his eyes again, then down for his morning nap.

[ReadingRenee]

I am wondering if she is taking too many short naps.  Her schedule is similar but there are more naps.  more like 10:15 -11 is her first nap and then 1- 2:30 or 3 is her second nap, (that is her only long nap of the day) then 4:40//5- 5 :30ish  and then she is tired again around 6 30ish for a 30 minute catnap but it puts her waking up at 7ish.  Then when she is tired around 8 30 or 9 and I put her to bed she just won't stay down. she is up again like its only a nap after about an hour where it will take me about 2 hours to get her back to sleep and staying asleep.  This is with a wake up time of around 8.

She usually won't stay up past 1.5 to 2 hours between naps so keeping her awake at 6 30 to pu ther down at 7 30 seems like it would be a bad idea because she would be overtired.  of course, what I am doing now isn't working either...

Anyone have any ideas for me?

[CarlyVHT]

I truly believe in the sleep-begets-sleep idea. DS wakes less frequently at night if he is well rested that day. Longer naps would probably be ideal but I don't know how you get there. I think you sort of have to follow the individual baby's sleepiness cues and go from there.

[RosieL]

I don't know if it's just the 4 month regression, but Odin is having sleep trouble lately. In the middle of the night, he will go to sleep nursing, but then once I put him in bed he wakes back up. He goes to sleep if I bring him in bed, but not the crib. It's been two nights of this. :( And two nights of not sleeping his usual 6 hour stretch in the first part of the night (7:30-1:30 to so). Maybe it is his shots from Tuesday, maybe it's a regression, but I'm really hoping it goes away on its own.

[CarlyVHT]

Grady has regressed. It could be the cold he's been fighting for weeks or it could be sleep regression. He was sleeping 8pm-1:30am but now he is waking up long before 1:30am. If I bring him to bed with me, he does fine - and since I value my sleep, that's what I do. Oh well. I do love snuggling him.

[ReadingRenee]

Originally Posted by CarlyVHT 

Grady has regressed. It could be the cold he's been fighting for weeks or it could be sleep regression. He was sleeping 8pm-1:30am but now he is waking up long before 1:30am. If I bring him to bed with me, he does fine - and since I value my sleep, that's what I do. Oh well. I do love snuggling him.

Apparently there is a 4 month growth spurt which we have just hit hard over here.  Maybe that is what it is for him. I had been working on our sleep but with a growth spurt I pretty much threw that out the window and just nurse every hour on the hour for the past 2 days.

Hopefully when its over I can get back to figuring out the best bedtime.

[prettyisa]

Oh, no. Don't tell me there's another growth spurt on the way! We've gotten E to go to bed around 9 every night for a while now, and it's keeping me sane. I know she'll keep changing things up on us, but I have been really praying that the bedtime stuff will stay consistent.

[ReadingRenee]

Update on the bedtime situation:  Any one elses experiences and ideas welcome. :)
 

I started getting her up at 7 am every day and bedtime quickly improved.  It became close to 8 830 every night and she usually stayed down for a few hours and was easy to put back down.  BUT daytime naps became a mess!  she started napping only 30 minutes at a time but waking up happy.  However her little eyes got huge circles under them and she looked tired all the time.  it was terrible.  So I went back to letting her get up around 8 or 8 30.  Great naps, lasting at least an hour and a half sometimes two hours but we are back to bedtime being terrible.  She wont go down til 10 or 11 and wakes up constantly until closer to midnight.  ARGH.

So now Im going to try getting her up at 7 30 and putting her down closer to 9.  I will have to start that tommorow though as she slept in til 8 40 this morning.