bedtimes?

[Minoh]

I was reading the thread about how long babies sleep through the night, but I'm just wondering what everyone classifies as "night"? I mean, what time do you put your DC to bed for the night?

Our little guy is now almost 7wks old and our so-called nighttime routine (nursing with lullabye, change into pjs) is somewhere between 9 and 10:30. But this usually starts after he's woken from an already long nap (sometimes 2hrs or more). During the day and evening he sleeps in a sling, wrap, lap, or basket (rarely can get him to sleep there ;), but at night he sleeps with us in bed. It's only after the nighttime feed that I nurse him to sleep in bed.

Do you think it would be good to put him down earlier in the evening, now that he can go longer between nursing sometimes, nursing him to sleep in the bed?

I'm so new to motherhood and don't really know what others with babies this age do. What kind of evening/night sleeptime routines do others have?

[birthjunkie27]

Samara goes to bed about 10 every night. If I go earlier (rarely) I bring her with me and she'll still nurse to sleep.

[IncaMama]

i sleep downstairs in our family room on the recliner with ava. well, she sleeps in her moses basket next to me or on my chest sometimes. so she typically falls asleep for the night at around 9ish but stays in the room with us while we watch movies, etc...and then dh goes upstairs to bed (with ds) and i stay here with her. she's up at 1 to nurse, then at 4 or 5, then usually up at 7 for a bit and back down until 10ish. confusing, i know. LOL

[Thursday Girl]

my way of doing things this early on is to follow there lead. luckily Josephine goes to bed at 10:30 ish, it just happened that way. we followed jewelys lead to unfortunatley she wanted to be up from 2-4 every night and it was her fussy time. that was rough b/c we weren't getting sleep ( i seem, for the most part, to have an inability to sleep during the day) and we were exhausted. we didn't put jewely into a routine with a bedtime until or shortly after her first birthday or maybe even 18 months. i think we could have done it earlier. when we didn put her on a routine her nights were much better.

courtney

[DesireeH]

Whenever here. LOL DS naturally gets tired around 10:30-11 so that is when he goes to bed (and always has, since he was small). Daphne is another story. LOL She is a super night owl like me and sometimes doesnt go to bed until 2 ish. I can get her to sleep earlier but as soon as I move or lay her down (even though its in my bed) she wakes up.

[Spark]

my way of doing things this early on is to follow there lead.

:yeah:

That's what we do, too. MY Josephine :wink sleeps best when swaddled. Early on during the night, we'd swaddle her all snug for bed. We'd unwrap her in the morning (even if she was up for hours during the night). I think that really helped her to associate sleep with being swaddled. So, now during Cicely's (my almost 2 year old) nap time, we'll swaddle Joie so she gets on the same sleep schedule as Cicely. So far it's working really well. Cicely and Joie sleep for the same overlapping 2 hours. NICE! :thumb

I have to say I 100% believe in the swaddling blankets. My favorites are the Swaddlers in polar fleece. Mmmm, she can sleep for hours and hours in those!

Her schedule seems to be like this...
10pm swaddle - she usually sleeps right then, but a few times up til 1am.
Wakes once during the middle of the night to nurse - Sooooo not like my non-sleeping son was.
7am - the older kids get up & i move joie downstairs w/o waking her.
8am - Joie wakes up.
cat naps off and on
11am - we swaddle her and she sleeps for a 3-4 hour chunk. (don't hate me!)
cat naps until bed time.

[amis2girls]

7-8, she fell into the same bedtime as the other two

[leahida]

Sami usually goes to sleep around 10 or 10:30 and sleeps until 2 or 3. Then he nurses for a good 2 hours sometimes, till 5 am! Or I nurse him while lying down and he drifts off sooner. Then he wakes up again around 7 or 7:30, and will typically take a late morning nap for a few hours. Other than that he doesn't sleep much during the day...little short stretches here and there.

I also had a question about swaddling-- I read somewhere that it's not safe to put a baby to sleep while they're swaddled due to increased risk of suffocation if they "tipped over" and couldn't use their arms to right themselves. Is that guideline mainly for crib, not co-sleeping, babies?

[allnaturalmama]

Will's naps during the day have yet to strike a pattern. He sleeps in short spurts either in the swing or on me in the sling. He nurses sometime around the children's bedtime (8pm).

When he gets fussy for his next feeding after that, DH and I go to bed with him and he nurses to sleep. It's usually around 10pm or so. He falls asleep quickly and sleeps til around 3-5am and starts "harumphing" and rooting around, nurses, (never really wakes up), and nurses again around 6-7am without fully waking. I get up after that and move him to the swing while I shower and make breakfast, etc, and he continues to sleep til around 10. Then the next 12 hours are anybody's guess. :D

At 5 weeks old, that's our day. I wonder what it'll be next week?