How old is your baby and what is your baby's nighttime routine?
My DS is 7wks old and we are just starting a bedtime routine. We are trying bath, massage, eat, story, then bed. I mostly BF but think I'd like to make the bottle part of the bedtime routine in case I am not there for some reason than I am not part of the bedtime routine but the bottle is. And the bottle can help signal bedtime, even if I am there. I might need to switch the feeding and massage around b/c, although DS loves his bath, he cries everytime he gets out of it and then will cry during massage btu if I feed him then he is fine.
Your baby may cry after the bath because he is cold.... my little girl if I don't wrap her in 2 towels and keep her pretty covered till she is completely DRY she flips out! hee hee! I don't do too much different because I am exhausted at the end of the day - I have 2 herniated discs one in my neck and one in my low back .... lovely eh?
Anyway - I was going to feed her in her room originally on the night feed etc but that didn't work out - hubby keeps getting home so late from work that I keep her in the living room and put the TV volume way low.... and I make sure to change her into her sleeper Pajamas before her bottle to signal this is it Missy! hee hee!! and it has worked nicely.
I give DD a bath to and if I don't have a bottle (breast when younger) or pacifier immediatly available than she flips!! as soon as she has it she is great. I think she is so relaxed from her bath that she needs the sucking part so she can sleep. She generally falls asleep within 20 minutes of a bath thats we give at 8 pm.
We started this routine from the moment her cord stump fell off and it has helped tremendously. We started this because we had a 19 month old on the same schedule.
We just started to have a routine over the weekend!
My ds is 11 weeks old and he always cries during his baths so I figured I'd give him one everynight (I was doing it three times a week) he'll get use to them. I was wrong of course, he'd rather bathe in the sink then in his baby bath tub. But anyways we have a bath (with lavander bubble bath), bottle while I rock him to sleep. He usually goes out on his own but if he's fighting the sleep (which he is good at lol) I rock him.
my DD is nearly 6 weeks old and as this is our first we're just taking things as they come at the moment but when is a good time to start a bedtime routine?
I personally think that anytime for you now is a good time to start. For us, I couldn't imagine trying to do a routine before 6wks. But DS is starting to cry less often and have some more happy episodes throughout the day. I knew I wanted to start a bedtime routine by 8wks old at the latest so that when we move we can keep the bedtime routine. We are moving 700 miles away when DS is 12 wks old. Since there will be so much change I wanted to at least have something familiar to him.
My son is almost 11 months old and it took me about 6 of those to establish a routine that would work for our family. At first I was doing a very elaborate night time routine-giving a bath, reading a book, singing a lullabye, giving a good night bottle etc.-but now Ive realized that the more simple the better. After he has his dinner, we play in the living room for about an hour, then start dimming the lights and turning down TV. Next I change his diaper(even if its clean) and brush his teeth. By this time he knows its bedtime and as soon as I put him into the crib he rolls to his side and goes to sleep on his own. Its the consistency that works for us. Also finding a routine thats simple means you can do it anywhere, like grandparents house or hotels. Good Luck!
Jansen I totally agree with the keep it simple ... we do the change the diaper put her in pajamas and give her the bottle with the TV down low or on mute/pause etc. and then she just drifts off to sleep on her own after we lay her down - she is never really sleeping before we lay her down - sometimes she is though.... snoring logs.... ahahahahha! my daughter is 4 months and we have been doing this since she was 3 months....
My DD was six weeks on Monday and we started a bedtime routine last week. Instead of bathing her 3 times a week, we now bath her every night. She absolutely loves taking a bath and sometimes even nods off in the tub! DH and I bath her together as he works long hours and doesn't get to spend heaps of time with her. We start the bath about 30 minutes before her last feeding for the night. Then it's off to our bedroom (we only switch on the lamps) to dress her for bed. We use Johnson's bedtime products which is supposed to be calming. We spend a few minutes on the bed with her, talking and cuddling. Then I feed and burp her in the same room and as soon as she gets drowsy I put her to bed. Oh, and from the start we play the same soothing music (Enya) every night while she's taking a bath. Sometimes I have to pick her up a few times and rock her or burp her a little before she finally falls asleep.
She usually sleeps about 4 hours before she wakes up for a meal. Then it's back to bed for another 4 hours. I'm not yet sure how I'll get rid of the 3 o'clock feedings...when should I start trying?
We are trying to get DS on a routine now. He is 9 weeks old. Our bedtime routine consists of feeding him, and then we change his diaper, wipe him down with warm wash cloth, and put hs jammies on. We do not feed him and put riht to bed. We are trying to teach him that "food" does not equal "sleep"...we are lucky to have a baby that sleeps from 9pm until 5am without waking. I think it is because we are doing this...a little of course, sorry.
I normally, after getting hi dressed, rock him until he is sleepy and then I put him to bed...he grunts a little, and tosses and turns, but then goes to sleep.
Ohh i am envious of all the mums who have babies who sleep for longer than 3 hours during the night!!
My little one is almost 7 weeks and still wakes every 3 hours for a feed. He may go one day a week where he will wake every 4 hours but mainly its still 3 hours. Sometimes during the day he wakes every 2 hours!!! I really dont know what to do. This is where i get confused in that the doc says he is going through a growth spurt (seems he has had one for the past 7 weeks!!) and that he should be having either 5 bottles of 150ml or 6 bottles of 130ml for his weight (which is 11 pound 8 by the way) BUT i tell the doc that he wakes every 3 hours for food. The doc says well then you can feed him 130ml - but if i do this it equates to 8 bottles a day!!! and thats heaps!!! I have tried to reduce the amount per feed to 100ml so he isnt getting over fed for the 8 bottles. Doesnt work. So i tried the 150ml for 5 feeds - doesnt work. He wants food every 3 hours no matter how much or how little he has had in his feeds.
And i got completely off the subject of this thread!
SORRY what i was going to say was that our bedtime routine is bath at 8pm -then feed, cuddle, then bed (he takes a while to settle at night) then i am up at 12, 3 and 6am every day
If anyone has any suggestions on a better bedtime routine to help me that wouold be GREAT!!! also suggestions re feeding??????? How can i make him go longer between feeds??? I am worried he is putting on too much weight too quickly. He averages about 300grams per week!!!! And that has been for the past month!! The doc doesnt seem too concerned but he says to try and get his feeding sorted. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i have even tried a bottle of water to try and hold off the feed times but that doesnt work either.
expectant you will get there i found when i stopped worrying about this issue ds dropped his night feed by himself. ds has 6 ounces (only usually has 5 of theseounces)every 4 hours in the day his last bottle at 10pmish i use hungry baby formula with the hope it will fill him through the night last night he went through till 5.50am. he is 11 weeks. filling ds in the day means he does not need the feeds in the night i wake ds every 4 hours in the day if he is sleeping as he needs to learn to go throught the night which he has been doing for 3 weeks or more now. also i found that when ds was having 7 bottles a day i never though he would drop to 5 but increasing the amount of formula eventually led to this. also i was sometimes feeding him because i thought he was hungry when infact he just wanted to suck for comfort i learned to check this by seeing if his dummy/ pacifier helped soothe him if it did he was not hungry as when hungry the soother definatly would work.
My DS just all of a sudden decided to take better naps in the day and all of a sudden started sleeping through the night, although it did start the very same night we started with the bedtime routine 3 nights ago. Here is how his nights have gone this week:
Mon - 7.5 hrs then 2 hrs
Tues - 6 hrs then 1 hr then 3.5 hrs
Wednesday - 9hrs! Then...??? (its 7am, he's asleep, not sure when he will wake up)
Expectant - Maybe you could try giving him a bath as part of the bedtime routine. This can help calm them while in the bath. And when they get out of the bath he might cry a lot. My DS does until we start feeding him. But the crying wears them out a bit. Then there tummy gets full. Then he sleeps great! A lot of other moms say the nighttime bath really helps.
My DD is 8 months old. I can't remember when we started the bedtime routine, but it was fairly early on. At around 5.30 pm she is fed her evening meal (this used to be a milk feed before she started on solids), then she plays with Daddy for about half an hour while I run the bath, draw the curtains and blackout blind (a must for anyone who doesn't want their little angel waking up as soon as the sun rises!) and get her nightclothes ready.
Daddy bathes her - we have lots of bath toys for her as it becomes part of the extended playtime by the time they are this age, then we make a game of getting her out of the bath and drying her. This started because she used to cry when we got her out of the bath. We quickly dry her off with a big towel, then wrap her up in a warm fluffy hooded towel - she bounces up and down on my knee when Daddy sings the Rocky theme tune as he wraps her up in it and I chant her name in the same way as they chant 'Rocky, Rocky, Rocky ...' in the film!
Then comes the wind down - we take her into the Nursery, put on a lullaby or nursery rhyme CD and get her ready for bed. Daddy kisses her goodnight and I make sure she is completely dry, put a fresh diaper on her and sometimes, but not always, I massage her, then put her nightclothes and Grobag on. She wriggles so much in the night that we can't keep sheets or blankets on her. It also helps to keep her from getting her feet stuck through the bars of the cot. I then turn off the CD and turn out the lights but leave the door open so I can give her a last milk feed in the rocking chair by the light from the bathroom, which is next door to the nursery. Sometimes she falls asleep when she is being fed, but more often than not she is still awake when she has finished it. I put her in the cot, kiss her goodnight and wave night-night. She gives me a big smile (if she is awake), waves back and I walk out of the room and shut the door - it's normally about 7.30 pm by this time. I check her about 15 minutes later and she is normally asleep.
She sleeps til about 5 am these days, when we hear her playing with her cot toys on the baby monitor. I leave her to settle herself back to sleep and get her up at about 6.30 or later, when I am ready to get her up!
With regard to milk feeds, we have always fed her on demand - she has as much as she wants when she wants. She used to wake 2 or 3 times in the night when she was breast fed (for the first 7 months), but now she is on formula and solids, she has her last feed at 7 or 8 pm and doesn't have any more until about 7 am. If she wakes in the night she gets a cuddle or just a gentle pat and then goes back to sleep.
The only thing we are going to try to change is to swap roles with DH occasionally, so that she doesn't need me to put her to bed every night. I sometimes bath her, but he never puts her to bed. I am worried about doing this because he is very playful with her and what she needs at that time is minimal eye contact and interaction, soft voices, etc. I'm sure he can do it with a bit of coaching, though!
EXPECTant - your baby is WAY toooo young still to expect it to sleep long without eating - oh god - mine was still eating once a night at 1230am on the nose at 3 months.... she dropped that feed around 3.5 months... hang in there - she is growing and needing to eat right now - I know it totally sucks ... but until your kid is 4 months old and waking more than 1 time a night - then I would be flipping out - !!!
My brothers kid though - woke up 1 time a night till he was about 1 year of age - ugh.....
And the other poster who said more daytime sleep equals better and longer night time sleep - is sooooo right... more naps - better night time sleeper!!
ANY IDEAS WOULD BE APPRECIATED any ideas of how to get ds to bring his bedtime forward? he currently falls asleep in my arms about 9pm i put him in his cot then wake him at 10 for his last feed then he goes back to sleep in the cot. however some nights he does not fall asleep on me at 9 and is awake till after his last feed at 10 when he then falls asleep then gets put in his cot. ds is always awake early evening a bath and his 6pm feed do not make him sleepy. he sleeps from around 10-1030 till 5 or 6 am, and he is 11 weeks.
We started a routine with Ds really early actually. About 9-10 weeks I'd say. He didn't start sleeping all the way through the night till about 12. By then it was 9-5 or 6 a.m. He's 8 months and his goes something like this.
7 p.m. Finishes last meal of solids
7-8 Excercises. He practices with his standing, sitting, crawling. The last one he still can't do.
8-8:30 Diaper free time for his sore bum
8:30-8:50 Bath time and lotion massage
8:50 or so he has his last bottle
Right after the bottle he goes to bed at 9 sleeping or awake. Even when he goes to bed awake we never hear a peep out of him. He just adjusts himself into a position to sleep and snuggles the blankets and he's out. He doesn't get up in the a.m. now until 8:30 when I get up.
We had no luck with the baby tub. He hated it and screamed from start to finish. After his stump fell off we put him on the mesh ramp in the big tub with the wash rag on his tummy and after a couple of days he was fine. I still have to do the lotion by uncovering one part with the towel at a time or he'll cry. He does enjoy the bath part now though. Good luck!
MJCOTA- I think it was you who said your baby cries during a bath. Mine did aswell. I have a baby tub for her that has a foam bottom and a sling for newborns. Either way, when I put her in the it she would cry the WHOLE time. I got the bright idea to lay a towel inside it and make it cushy for her. The towel also stayed warm from the water. The sides of the sling would go cold right after the water hit it. You might try that, it worked well for us. Now that DD is almost 4 months old I no longer have to lay a towel in the baby tub as she has gotten SO use to a bath.
Anyhow, our rountine starts at 7pm. I bathe her, put lotion on(which we are still working on not crying during this part), dress her in a sleeper, then we usually cuddle for a few minutes and say goodnight to her daddy, nurse her in her rocking chair, then lay her down (still awake most of the time) with her paci and the music from her mobile on. She usually starts to fuss after the music turns itself off, so I go back in and start it again and give paci one more time. After that she's out. Goodluck!
Robert Michael Born on 3/20/06 
