What age should you look at sleep routine for baby?

[wizzywoo]

My baby is 11 weeks old. A friend advised that we should start putting him to bed at 7pm which we started 5 nights ago. He goes down relatively well but the problem is he now wants feeding twice in the night again - at around 12.30 and around 3.45. Have other people tried putting baby into sleep routine at this age? If you are doing this, do you wake baby at your bedtime to have a feed to help him sleep through better? Does this work? I just don't know what to do as prior to this he only had one feed at about 2.30am but this relied on him having a bedtime feed somewhere around 9.30-10.30. Now with two night feeds and him starting to be noisy and wriggly at around 4.30 ish I'm struggling!

[babesinbrum]

Hi,

I personally think it's best to start a good & established bedtime routine as soon as possible.

Even from beyond birth a baby has a familar pattern of what they are expected to do I.E.... eat, sleep & etc...

As your Lil one is now 11wks old he/she is probably going through what is known as growth spurt & as a result of this starts to feed more regularlly & maybe longer.

xx

[mummy32015]

Babies develop their own routine and i think its not till after 12 weeks they distinguish between day and night. . A child will wake regardless of bedtime if they want a feed. . I always chose baby led, feed when they ask, then i was guaranteed sleep in between. my children never slept through, one still had a 2am drink till he was 2. I think only 2feeds at 11 weeks is bliss, don't knock it x

[mamator]

Two feeds a night at 11 weeks is perfectly normal and probably what most babies do (some, like mine, want more!). Although you'll always hear of babies sleeping through at 11 wks or just feeding once, it really isn't the norm. I think that I started putting mine down at roughly the same time every night at about 11 or 12 weeks). This wasn't so much to try and impose any kind of sleep programme (I always fed them when ever they wanted) just to gently help the adjust to day/night patterns. During the day mine always napped in a baby bouncer or Moses basket in the living room, when I put them down for the night it was in their night-time bed (co-sleeper crib for us) in a dark bedroom.

Some babies don't sleep through the night for quite a long time. I'd say that for me, and the vast majority of people I know, babies start sleeping through the night somewhere between 8-12 months. Of course some start earlier and some later but it's all normal. What I can tell you for sure is that it WILL happen. There will come a beautiful time when your baby sleeps for 10 or 11 hours (sometimes even 12!) in one stretch. This is really is just a phase. Nap when you can, eat well (as healthily as you can but don't even think about trying to lose weight now, it's just not the time) and beg people to help while it's hard.

Look after yourself as well as you can - x

[Hotdiggitydog]

I have always had a bedtime routine for my son but not a strict timed regime or anything. Basically he knows it's bedtime as he has bath pjs story milk bed his whole life. But I've never made a specific time for it, just when he's showing the signs and gettin him bathed and such at a reasonable hour. From 5 weeks to 17 weeks he slept through the night. Then it stopped and he woke a lot,tthough not for feeds by this point. Now sometimes he wakes, sometimes he doesn't. I just go with his flow and he has got himself into a routine of being ready for sleep at 8. x

[Hidden]

Do what works for you. You could try a dream feed just before you go to bed, if that doesn't work for you, try something else. My lb is 14 weeks and he doesn't have a set bedtime. His daytime naps fit around my toddler's activities, so he kind of has a day time routine, but I don't strictly stick to it. Everyone has their own way of doing things and can give you advice or tell you what works for them. I watch and listen to my children and let them guide me.

My sister in law had her children in pretty strict routines from early on and she's currently going through a difficult phase of them waking in the night or not wanting to go to bed (they're 3 and 1).