Help with 3 month old's bedtime

[jessmke]

Since about 6 weeks we have put our daughter to bed sometime between 7-8pm. Her bedtime routine takes about 20-30 min (bath, massage, stories, feed, bed). The routine really helps to calm her down and she falls asleep very easily. The problem is that every single night she wakes up after one sleep cycle, so about 30-45 min after she falls asleep. Sometimes she is still really drowsy, but most of the time she is wide awake and ready to party for an hour. I keep her in the bedroom and will hold her, rock her, try unsuccessfully to nurse her, etc, but she just will not go back to sleep. Finally around 9 pm I can get her to feed a bit and then she will go back to sleep and be out for about 4 hours until her next feed. My question is, should I move her bedtime to 9pm? It seems like that is more of a natural time for her to go down for the night, but I worry that if I do that she will still wake up after 1 sleep cycle and then we will be up until 11 pm trying to get her down for the night.

I'm also not sure how I would manage to keep her up that late. She gets pretty cranky by about 7 pm-ish, which is why we started doing her bedtime at that time.

 

[Button#]

I would try putting her to bed earlier if she's cranky. It may be she's overtired and that's why she can't settle. Or it could be that she's treating that stint as a nap and that's why she's playful afterwards.

 

[jessmke]

I hadn't even thought about doing an earlier bed time, maybe tonight I'll start her bedtime around 6/6:30 and see if that helps. Thanks!

 

[Button#]

Fingers crossed it works.

 

[jessmke]

OK it is 6:45 pm and baby is down for the night! I put her down awake but drowsy and she fell asleep quite quickly, fingers crossed she stays that way! If this works and she sleeps for a long stretch, should I dream feed her before I go to bed? She has been waking every two hours this week (don't know if it's growth spurt, wonder week, or the dreaded 4 month sleep regression starting early!) but I am worried about waking her since her sleep has been so crappy this week.

 

[jessmke]

Nope. She woke up at 7:20pm, but she was still very drowsy. I rocked her and nursed her twice and finally got her back down by 8pm. Hopefully this time she stays down!

 

[Button#]

I think you're in a different time zone to me. I don't dream feed but I'm too scared to disturb them when they're sleeping. At least she went back down.

To be honest it could be any or all of the above reasons for her waking. My first was a terrible sleeper and the best thing I learned was just to go with it. Babies sleep is up and down and all over the place with regressions, teething, growth spurts and normal development. One day they'll sleep through and all you can really do is get through it as best you can. Go to bed early when it's really tough, don't put too much pressure on yourself and if you can try not to clock watch too much at night (easier said than done!).

 

[minties]

It does sounds like that first part of her night sleep as a nap. I know very well how hard it is staying up waiting for a baby to be ready for a longer sleep, but I would possibly let her have a 45 minute nap early in the evening and have bedtime about 9pm and go to bed at the same time myself. My son naturally started his bedtime at 8:30pm at about 9 weeks and I just went with it.

 

[Diannam]

My baby is close to the same age as yours and his bedtime varies between 8:30-9:30 usually. He has a nap usually around 7. As much as I would like that bedtime he just won't sleep longer than 30 minutes at that time. I am going through some sleep issues as well right now. He discovered rolling and wakes up stuck on his tummy or for other reasons. His sleep isn't great anymore, used to be up just once a night and last night it was 4 times. I hope our baby's get their sleep sorted out soon.

 

[jessmke]

So the same thing happened last night. I put Isla to bed at 6:30, she went down really easily. Then by 7 she was awake again, but she was definitely still tired. She finally fell asleep for good by 8ish. Tonight I will try putting her down for a nap around 6:30, then when she wakes we will do her bedtime routine and go to bed. I guess it's just going to be trial and error until we find her sweet spot.

 

[MindUtopia]

I would say probably just keep doing what you're doing. It will all fall into more of a pattern soon. At 3 months, our daughter was still just sleeping on us in the wrap downstairs. We didn't even bother with a 'bedtime' though she usually went to sleep around 7 or 7:30 after a feed and then didn't wake again until 10-11 for another feed. That's also an option if you feel she would sleep better on you than upstairs by herself. If it means you get more done in the evening and aren't spending so much of it upstairs trying to get her back to sleep, it might be something to try. It worked for us and it meant when we did put her to sleep on her own at 4 months, she was adjusted to a 6:30/7pm bedtime. Most babies at that age do need about 12 hours of nighttime sleep, so if you don't want to be having her wake for the day at 9am, I would keep things as you've been doing them and just let her get caught up. When we went through phases like this (we didn't have one that early, but we did have a rough one at 9 months), one of us did bedtime while the other made sure dinner was ready, then as needed we switched, so we both got to sit down and eat and we both got to decompress a bit in the evening when we felt like we were losing our minds about bedtime. That helped get through it until it smoothed itself out again.

 

[jessmke]

I've spent all morning reading about short sleep in babies and I think our problem is that she is overtired, regardless of what time we have been putting her to sleep. She has only been taking short 30 min naps for the last week or so, I know she is in a growth spurt so that could be the cause. Regardless, she is pretty much always tired this past week. The last two nights when I've put her to bed early she was fussy and yawning before we started her bedtime routine, so she was already quite tired. I've always tried to keep her awake for a few hours before bed, thinking that if she was tired enough she would sleep longer, but it seems the opposite is true. Today I'm going to try a nap, and then as soon as she wakes from the nap start her bedtime routine so she is in bed within the hour of waking up. As it goes right now she pretty much falls asleep instantaneously after her bedtime routine, which I thought was a good thing, but from what I've read today that means she is actually overtired when I put her to sleep, which could be the reason she is waking after 1 sleep cycle. It seems that if I put her to bed at the right level of tiredness, it should take 5-10 minutes for her to settle and fall asleep. I may just be overthinking all of this, but tonight we are going to try the nap right before bed and see what happens. I might end up trying a bunch of different bed times just to realize that this is just the way she is, but I don't mind experimenting a bit to see if we can find something that works better for everyone. I would like her bedtime to be around 7-8 pm, because a 7-8 am wake up works very well for us since her swimming lessons and baby groups all start around 9:30/10 am and it is best if she has at least a 30 min nap before going to her activities.

She also has a bad case of what we call FOMO (fear of missing out!), so keeping her with us in the evenings doesn't help because she fights sleep so she doesn't miss out on what we are doing. She has always slept better when she is put down than if we hold her, so I think it's best if we put her to bed in a quiet room rather than keeping her with us until we go to bed.

I will update tomorrow on how nap then bedtime goes tonight.

 

[jessmke]

I think we have figured out what works for us! We tried 4 nights of an early bedtime 6:30ish, and each night she would wake after about 45 min and either be wide awake, or sleepy but unable to fall back asleep easily. Now we are doing a nap around 6:30/7, then in bed for the night between 8-9pm. No more waking after one sleep cycle! I just go to bed at the same time so I get a good 4-5 hrs of sleep before I have to feed her. Now if she would just stop waking up to poop at 5 am we will be golden!

 

[laila 44]

Can I suggest a book that changed my life? "On becoming baby wise" read it, it's a life saver. It will explain schedules appropriate ages etc. Maybe u need to tweak something during the day In order to fix bedtime issue. A 730pm bedtime for a 3 month old is perfect, you are doing the right thing. If she's not crying can you just see what happens without you going to get her after 45min wake up ? That's know as the 45 min intruder. They are often just switching into another sleep cycle and will go right back down on their own if left to it. Obviously if baby cries then u go but if she's content and awake is leave her to see if she would go back down