Bedtime routine… or lack of

My little one is just 7 weeks, but we started this little routine around 5 weeks. He has a bath at 7:30-7:45, he’s out and ready for his bottle at 8pm (regardless of the time he had the previous one) and then he’s asleep by 8:15pm. He does a sleep stretch of 6 hours, wakes around 2 and then has another bottle and back to bed until around 7-7:30am.

Oh that sounds good! Mine takes ages to settle after his bottle then I need to pump so our bedtime is so long at the moment, maybe I will look to bring it forward but we aren’t really getting the long first stretch yet…

We didn’t to begin with, but he is now. We’ve set up the camera in the room, so I can then come down and pump and have a abit of ‘me time’ before bed. I know not everyone wants to do that though. As his final bottle tends to be a ‘top-up’, he’s typically asleep by the time he’s had enough/finished the bottle.

So routines are going to be really hit and miss at this age with babies. Bedtime routine is more important in terms of making sure that day is loud and light and night is quiet and dark because they dont produce the hormones to learn day and night until around 12 weeks. And in terms of routine its important to set up the bath, feed in dark room, sleep sack or whatever your routine may be. For us with my daughter her bedtime bottle used to be around 8.30pm give or take. All bottles before that would be in the living room. After that I would move to the dark bedroom and feed her there in the dark room with quiet music in the background. Now with my son, he seems to fedd a bottle and hour some days leading up to bedtime or he does 2 bottles in an hour and a half before bedtime, then I put toddler to bed. Then I get baby, change nappy, put in sleep sack, put on music, give a small top up of bottle in dark room and put in moses basket around 9pm.

My daughters 6 weeks, I bath her around 7:30 and nurse her until she’s asleep which is usually around 8:15-8:30. She’ll sleep until midnight snd then I’ll do a change and feed. She’ll sleep again until 4am and then I’ll only change if she’s done a no2. I nurse back to sleep and then she’s up at 7:30-8am.

My son will be 6 weeks on Monday.. started to try get a little routine going but not overly rigid.. 1. Start to make the house dark from around 8.30pm - eg close curtains, red lighting etc 2. 9pm - 11pm, breastfeed , change, top up with expressed milk if still showing hunger cues. 3. Let him fall asleep in arms and transfer to crib when extra sleepy (doesn’t always work) 4. He sometimes wakes again 2.5 hr - 4hrs later for a breastfeed then will go back to sleep again