When does your baby go down for the night? - Page 2

[aisraeltax]

last night aroudn 1:30 am!!! looking around, smiling, cute as a button wide awake! at least it wasnt screaming, crying child but still....wow! he hasnt done that in awhile! !

[mamanerd]

baby bedtime

DS (9 mos) has shifted around a lot as the sun comes up earlier and goes down later. Currently he's going down between 8:30 and 10:30, and up around 8ish in the morning, 9 when we're really lucky. His first block of sleep is the longest, which I should be sharing with him, but often decide to use as uninterrupted time to myself, or with DH. I sleep with DS and he nurses through the night (I _wish_ he only woke up twice to nurse!). Starting at about 4 a.m., he gets really antsy. If I get him up and take him to the pot, he'll pee, then nurse back to sleep quietly again. I can also get him to go back to sleep without peeing, but then he's awake twenty minutes later or so with a soaked diaper, so that's hardly worth it. He'll pee again a couple more times and nurse back to sleep again before he wakes up for real and won't go back to sleep.

I have very mixed feelings about the whole process when he's really nursing a lot (and, consequently, peeing a lot). But on more normal (non-growth spurt?) nights, it's quite nice to be able to get him up in the morning in the same, dry, small cloth diaper he went to sleep in the night before. I knew that infant feeding practices correlate tightly with infant sleep (a bottle of formula or cows milk in the early evening will knock a baby out for six hours or so); I hadn't realized how tightly correlated elimination practices are with infant sleep.

Some (but not all) days, DS and I take a nap together in the afternoon. Other days, he gets his naps on walks in the stroller and/or drives in the car.

[ElisabethAnne]

If she doesn't take a nap, then she usually goes down about 7 or 8, but when she takes a nap it's 10 or 11. I prefer no nap and earlier bedtime because even though I usually have to run in and nurse her back to sleep once or twice before I climb in to bed with her, at least I can see an end to my long day. They used to just keep going on for ever! It's just since she started dropping her naps that I have been able to look forward to a little quiet time at night. Phew! Maybe some day she'll actually sleep through the night!

[jdandme]

My 10 mo goes down around 11:00 pm too which is a great relief because I was concerned that this is way too late of a time. He almost always wakes up around 10 am, which is fine with me because we are a family of night owls. My dh works nights so it is nice because he gets to spend time with his ds. He is down to 2 naps around 1 hour each.

[starparticle]

Leif has a 7:00 bedtime, we found if he stays up much later he just melts down like crazy then wakes up all night grumpy. A bit of a pain to stick to, but it is working okay.

[dflanag2]

Circadian Rhythm

Some nights DS (22 mos) goes down without a fuss between 9 and 9:30; other nights he is up past 11 PM. I find that if I don't get him to sleep by 9:30 we are in for the long haul, sometimes it has taken over an hour for him to fall asleep in a completely dark quiet bedroom with me lying beside him; we nurse, we sing a few songs, then I say it is time to be quiet and still. If it is taking too long we get up and try again later.

The evening routine is really affected by his naptime, which variest from 11:30 AM at the earliest to past 5 PM! With very few exceptions, we get up each day by 8:30 AM. The way I see it, I have to encourage naps and bedtime based on his circadian rhythm, which has it's low points at 11:30-1 PM, 5-7 PM, and that little 9 PM window. I would be willing to put him down for the night between 5 and 7 PM, but DH does not return home from work until after 7 PM, and they would not see one another during the week.

Today was a 5 PM nap. I tried several times to talk him into lying down earlier in the afternoon, (I needed the nap myself) but he was just not interested. As a result, he stayed up this evening and didn't fall asleep until about midnight. Fortunately, the late bedtime mixed with 8:30 wakeup should significantly increase the odds of the midday naptime. It's almost like he doens't need a nap except every other day.

For a few days last week, we tried No Nap since he was so uninterested in taking one, but it was clear that he was very tired without the daytime rest, so I am giving as much naptime encouragement as possible, mixed with lots of physical activity. We can spend up to two hours at a time playing at the playground.

IMO, I say don't worry about when babies/toddlers 'should' sleep, just listen to their circadian rhythms. If they are nodding off at a certain time of day each day, seize the naptime opportunity. If they like to be awake at night, so be it. (At our house we end up taping any TV shows that we really want to see.) Also, don't bother trying to put the kid to bed unless s/he is showing signs of tiredness; if it takes 2 hours for the child to fall asleep, you might as well be doing something else during that time, playing, reading books, etc. My favorite is when DH or I fall asleep and DS leaves the bedroom and goes to play with his toys. Thank goodness he is not the type to get into things.

dflanag2 mother of DS 22 months with DD on the way 8/06- planning a homebirth (bfing, cding, cosleeping happy family)