Newborn bedtime TIME

[rosegarden620]

Hello everyone!
Just wondering about others experiences with their newborns at the moment. Hope you all can find it in your heart to share!!

My little one is coming up on 6 weeks old. She is a wonderful baby but as of late (last week) she's been super fussy. More than just evening fussiness. Yesterday I felt like she was irritated all day. Then, by 7pm she was a crying wreck!

We gave her a bath, did something's that normally work and after a good swaddle and feed she was asleep for the night by 11pm! Earlier than usual! She slept in her crib until about 2am then we co slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

All her fussing prompted me to do some reading on the subject of newborn sleep.

What I found is that dh and I were actually doing things wrong...really wrong. For us, nap/sleep time is when she starts fussing/crying. Come to find out by that time- it's too late, we already have an overtired baby. It just seems that what I've thought to be random fussiness is actually a severely cranky/overtired newborn!!

It's got me rethinking how I do things.

Example: my dd has her witching hours between 9p-1a. Halfway through those hours we give her a bath and eventually, after a good feed, she will go down an stay down at about 1230-1am until 4:30-500am. She sleep nurses then stays down until 7, she sometimes sleep nurses then or wakes up for a short period before she's asleep again until 10...this is when her normal nap hours starts (1-1.5hrs at a time)....

So it seems that we have been putting her to bed too late!

So my question is, how early and at what time did you put your little ones to bed for evening sleep?

 

[MindUtopia]

Babies do generally need about 12 hours (give or take) of sleep a night, so, yes, you might find it helpful to start to get her to bed earlier before she's fussy (you'll probably find it a lot easier too) and it will help her to get enough sleep too. At only 6 weeks, we didn't really have a bedtime routine per se. My daughter had her last feed around 7pm ish and she would go in the wrap with my husband after that and sleep until maybe 10-11pm, when she'd wake for a feed, then we'd take her to bed, I'd feed her and then we'd co-sleep the rest of the night. So yes, technically, she was going to sleep at about 7-8pm, but we didn't put her to bed upstairs away from us, if you see what I mean. I think that helped her to transition to getting used to going to sleep earlier, so that at 4 months, when we did start to do bathtime and putting her to sleep in our room for the evening, it was an easy transition. There isn't necessarily a 'right' or a 'wrong' way to do it and some babies do have a naturally later bedtime (they often also sleep later in the morning), but generally I would start to shoot for about 12 hours of nighttime sleeping, starting to get ready for bed before the overtired stage begins, even if some of that sleep in on your chest in the evening, in a wrap, etc. What is she doing between about 7pm and when she goes to bed? Is she awake? What you might try doing is just getting her bath early in the evening (6 or 7pm), getting her dressed for bed, then feeding as usual and see if she's seeming sleepy, then try to get her to bed then. My guess is, she probably wants to sleep, has a nice feed at some point during the evening, and is tired, but then you give her a bath which wakes her up and interrupts the getting ready for sleep process. If you try just getting her ready for bed earlier, you might be able to just take advantage of whenever she gets sleepy in the evening or lie down with her and feed her earlier after and see what she does.

 

[NotNic]

Nighttimes have always been fairly consistent for us. My eldest went down at 8/8.30 at that age. My youngest was 7.30/8. Now at 6mths and 3 bedtime is normally 7pm for both as they can be bathed together. Neither have been good nappers as babies and my eldest who was a terrible sleeper slept best in the hours before midnight, so an earlier or later bedtime wouldn't be right for us. By 6 weeks both were put upstairs to sleep alone. For the first few weeks the babies slept downstairs with us before we went to bed after the last evening feed.

 

[Button#]

At the moment we're taking her up the same time as DS at 6.30. She has a quick wash and clean nappy and change for bed then after I have said goodnight to DS at 7pm I snuggle into bed with her with just the lamp on and feed and cuddle her until she's asleep and I can put her in her cot. Sometimes she doesn't fall asleep until 9pm, sometimes she'll fall asleep at 8pm then wake up to poo after 10 minutes and not go back down until 10pm. It means I don't spend much time in the evening with OH but I'm able to take advantage of the first block of sleep so I can function as she tends to wake up around 12.30am then fuss from about 3.30am and I don't really get to sleep after that.

 

[bdb84]

We've been following a routine since DD was a few weeks old. She's 10 weeks now. She is asleep between 7-7:30pm. I do a dreamfeed at 10pm before going to bed myself and she sleeps through until sometime between 4-5AM (this morning was 5:30AM, though). I nurse her and she goes back down immediately until she rises on her own around 7AM.

 

[hanni]

My DS goes to bed about 11pm and has done since he was about a week old.
We have bath at about half 8/ 9pm, bottle then cuddles until he falls asleep. We've never had any problem with it and he doesn't seem overtired, he just lies with his dummy and snuggles in peacefully. He stays asleep until about 5am, has a bottle and then goes back down until 8/9am.

 

[TTC First]

I think that you will find that bedtime is different for formula and breastfed babies as formula tends to keep babies full longer. I am a foster parent so I have to formula feed.

At 6 weeks I tend to stick with a feeding every 3 hours. At night we will feed around 10pm 1am, then 4 or 5 am. We really don't have set nap times at 6 weeks old because they tend to sleep when ever and where ever.

I have also heard that crying can mean that a baby is overtired, but keep in mind that most babies will have to cry themselves to sleep at that age. I wouldn't say that you were doing things wrong. You are still learning your child. Pay attention to their needs and when they get tired. How many hours can the baby stay awake? This will tell you when you can start implementing nap times in the next couple weeks.

I find that my kids tend to get tired 2 hours after getting up in the morning. When I found that they were sleeping less during the day I implemented a nap 2 hours after they got up in the morning. After they were good with the morning nap, I payed attention to when they got tired after their nap and put their second nap in there. That was the schedule that I went with.

 

[Laurans]

Mmmm in some ways I'm worried that my 7week old doesn't have enough routine!! However what we do kind of works for us!

He combi feeds and has bottle or boob (often both) every 3 hours in the day and then the last feed is between 930-10 pm. I struggle to get him to sleep before 1130 and then he sleeps until 430/5 am then until 7.
The problem is my husband often doesn't get home until 8 pm so by the time we have had dinner and cleared up it's 9 pm!
Thing is baby is happy , I'm happy, getting enough sleep etc so not much motivation to change!

He has a beautiful nursery (which he doesn't use at the moment because he sleeps in our bedroom!) which I'm planning on him starting to sleep in around 4-6 months, at this point it will be bath, bottle/boob, story bed
......my question is.... Will this be too late to start a routine?

X

 

[rosegarden620]

Your responses have been eye opening!

MindUtopia- like your LO my dd has a feed around that time (7pm) and will usually nap for 30-60min before she's up fussing. Now, we do have a lot going on at home with two older children and a rambunctious dog so I imagine when you are ready for bed the last thing you want is all that commotion yet we put her in the center of it all in her swing which is in our living room. I'm sure that contributes to her lack of sleeping. Then we usually spend the next few hours trying to "figure her out" bc at that point she is super cranky- not inconsolable- cranky. We call bath time our "ace" bc within a half hour of bath time she is starting to drift and doesn't fuss so much at the breast and will nurse until she's full and then she knocks out. So we would "save it" for later nt thinking that it was actually interrupting her attempts to sleep. The other day she was crying so mch and literally cried herself to sleep.

I also read that most newborns at this age aren't awake for longer than 40-1.5hrs at a time, depending on the last sleep. That's another thing we were doing wrong...the poor little one would be awake for 40 minutes no problem and then get cranky turned angry, and would be up another hour crying or whimpering.

So what I'm going to do is what you've suggested. Move bath time to 7/8pm or around that time depending here her last afternoon nap falls, nurse and attempt to put her to bed. I'm assuming because she's fully up my 10am her natural bed time might be around that time too!!

Wish me luck!!

 

[Loozle]

My dd definitely needs an earlier bedtime. She has a bath at 7pm, BF from 7.30 until she falls asleep, usually 8ish then goes to bed. She will then usually sleep until 4ish (today it was 4.45) then wake for a feed, straight back to sleep and then co-sleeps until we have to get up to get ready for the school run, usually at 7am.

 

[sezzolou]

At around 6-8 weeks my lo started fussing in the evening. We changed last nap of the day which was downstairs in the bouncer to bedtime upstairs in the crib and things have been great ever since. The first stretch of sleep in an evening/night time is often the longest for babies followed by shorter stretches after the first night feed. When we changed last nap to bedtime ds2 started sleeping 7pm - 1am, followed by 2 night feeds between 1-6am. That soon dropped to 7pm-4am ish, feed then back to sleep until 7.30am. Ds2 is formula fed, I imagine feeds may be more frequent for bf babies. Dream feed at 11pm didn't work for us as it disrupted his long stretch of sleep and was then waking every 3 hours or so for the rest of the night.

Could you maybe try settling lo upstairs or in a quiet room for that last nap instead of in the bouncer...you will soon find out if lo wants to take it as a nap or bedtime.

Ds1 did the same thing when he was around 8 weeks old and I didn't realise for ages that he was actually wanting an earlier bedtime. We spends weeks bouncing, jigging and feeling exhausted with an overtired hysterical baby until someone suggested we try it

 

[rosegarden620]

Could you maybe try settling lo upstairs or in a quiet room for that last nap instead of in the bouncer...you will soon find out if lo wants to take it as a nap

This. I'm going to try this to gauge out if this nap is meant to be a nap for her or too see if it is an earlier bedtime request.

I've been putting her down way earlier than I would have today all day and it's been working out wonderfully, there's no fight. She did wake up after her 3:00pm nap rather cranky which threw me off. She awoke cranky and spent the majority of her time awake cranky. I figured maybe she wasnt ready to wake up, so I re swaddled her on two separate occasions to get her to go back down to no avail.

A quick diaper change, five more minutes of nursing, and three swaddles later she is doZing off in her bouncy chair at the hour mark for her wake time.

Not sure what happened there but I'm still trying to get her to sleep. She's cranky awake but not really falling asleep...rather, she's enjoying the rocking motion quietly, so I'll take it - no fussing at the moment.

 

[rosegarden620]

Update!!!

After her little fussy period after her 3pm nap, she slept for 35 minutes until a little before 6. At about 645-7pm she started getting fussy again. We bathed her, closed the blinds in the room removed all stimulation and I fed her for 10min (all she wanted). Dh took over and held her quietly until she started to doze off. Then before she was officially asleep we put her in her crib where we gave her her paci and she fell asleep! On her own, no tears!!

I do think we were a tad bit late in getting her in the bath bc of how she was acting before the feed and after the bath but nothing detrimental.

A little over an hour later and still no peep! So I'm thinking she's ready for night sleep by 7. I anticipate a feed around 9/30-10 but I'm hoping after she will crash until 4ish when she will wake up for a feed and go back to sleep.


Question:
When you guys refer to Dreamfeed....is this when they wake up to only eat and go back to sleep?

Do you remove them from there bed to dream feed before they cue you? Or is it best to wait for them to let you know?

P.s dh and I literally danced in silence when we saw our early bed time had worked!!! I feel so accomplished!!!

 

[bdb84]

I do not wake her for the dreamfeed. She's always in a very deep sleep at 10pm when I do the feed, so I'm able to pick her up out of her bed and sit down with her without her so much as startling. It can take a minute or two to get her roused *just* enough to latch on. She will nurse for one full let down and then I put her back down and she falls back into a deep sleep almost instantly.

 

[lisaalove]

Interested in this dreamfeed tbing.... never heard of it till lately and just wondering does it have be between 10-11 or is it just like a certain amount of time after they initially fall asleep? And has anyone done this with an overactive letdown? Did you have to wake your baby?

 

[hanni]

Whenever I've tried dream feeding dominic he clamps his mouth shut and is having non of it.
Wow for getting her to sleep earlier! Dominic was still wide eyed and chatting away to me at 23:45 😩 he'd only had a few 20 minute cat naps throughout the day. This kid isn't a sleeper!

 

[sezzolou]

That's brilliant that she settled so quickly. Hope it continues as it did for us. At 17 weeks our lo goes down in his crib awake at 6.30pm and self settles, wakes at 4am or a quick feed then sleeps until 7.30 am unless ds1 wakes him up earlier. Hope the dream feed works for you. X

 

[rosegarden620]

Morning update!
It worked, by my standards, wonderfully!
Dd slept from 7pm-10pm where she had a 20 minute feed between 10-11pm. She went down again easily but woke at 11:45/12am for a snack feed (less than 10 min)from where we co slept the rest of the night from 12-6am. By 6am she was up, ready for a diaper change and all smiles!! My baby must have felt so refreshed!! Up for an hour and now she's napping again at 730am. So, it averaged out to about 10-11hrs of evening sleep.

I'm sure as our routine keeps up and she's able to last longer between those feedings that we had last night it will even be better.

It's bittersweet though! On one hand we have an earlier sleeper which means, for the first time in over a week dh and I were able to share some alone time with a glass of wine, sans children on the couch for a movie! THAT was an incredible feeling to have our children ALL asleep in their beds simultaneously. I was so giddy! On the other hand: early to bed early to rise. There's no way my bedtime can be 7pm, so when I do go to bed I run the risk of losing the sleep. BUT she did sleep from 12-6am and that is a first. Usually she's up at 4 then at 6.

The best of it all? No fussy baby!! All her sleeping yesterday made for a very peaceful relaxed day.

I think I'll attempt dream feeding as she gets more accustomed to her routine. I don't want to throw her off. I hope tonight goes as well!

 

[bdb84]

I'm glad it worked so well for you! Here's to hoping for a happier baby (and Mom!) in the long run.

Interested in this dreamfeed tbing.... never heard of it till lately and just wondering does it have be between 10-11 or is it just like a certain amount of time after they initially fall asleep? And has anyone done this with an overactive letdown? Did you have to wake your baby?

I've read that anything after 11:30 is considered a "middle of the night feed", and so to keep it between 10-11. I loosely follow Babywise (before anyone assumes, my baby has NEVER cried herself to sleep- this routine has been so predictable and natural for her) and so this is where I learned about dreamfeeding.

What I *have* learned is that, if I feed BEFORE 10pm, she will wake up around 3:30ish to nurse. If I feed around 10:15 or so, she won't wake up until around 5 to nurse, and then she always falls back to sleep until 7 or 7:30ish. Seeing as I usually do not go to bed until around 11pm, putting off the dreamfeed until 10 something is not a problem for me.

 

[sezzolou]

That's great. We have early mornings with ds1, usually 6am but I prefer the babies having a 7pm bedtime so i get a few hours to myself in an evening rather than an extra 30-60 minutes if sleep in the morning....I don't always feel like that come 6am though lol. The only thing with a dream feed is how do you know when lo might be ready to drop it? It only took a few nights for ds2 in this routine before he started sleeping 7-4am before waking for a feed. Occasionally it's 5am and a couple of times he's slept right through until 6/6.30am. I guess if he slept from dream feed until morning it would be worth it but he still wakes around 4/5am if I give that extra feed and is guaranteed to have a night poo explosion lol 😣
I go to bed around 9-10pm at the minute. Will go to bed later when he starts sleeping through 😊