Babies have Bedtime??

Stephanie - posted on 07/30/2010

I'm a stay at home/work from home mom so we usually don't roll out of bed until 9 or 10am. Which means that my son (only child, 13months) goes to sleep anywhere from 9pm to 11pm. Around 8pm we do a bath, sometimes a bed time snack depending on what time we ate dinner and then cuddle in bed, read books etc. until he winds down and is ready to go to sleep. Then we nurse to sleep.

Schmoopy - posted on 07/19/2010

I think babies benefit greatly from a schedule. My 14-month-old is absolutely ready to go to bed at 6:00 every night. (I have trouble keeping him up later.) He sleeps until 4:00 when he wakes to nurse and then goes back to sleep until 6:00 am.



It takes a lot of work to get there, but my theory is that if you show your baby how to sleep, they'll do a great job!



P.S. You said that your baby sometimes doesn't seem "ready" for bed - it could be that she's overtired at that point and is "revved up." A routine would help her know when it's time to wind down.

Danielle - posted on 07/16/2010

Some may think I'm horrible ;) but not only do we not have a bedtime, my youngest 2 are usually up until about midnight or so. There's a great reason for this though- the baby sleeps a 5 hour stretch and then another 3-4 hour stretch after he nurses (more like chugs...you'd swear I starve him with the way he eats in the middle of the night).

If I put him down at 7, he's going to be up to nurse at midnight and then up for the day at like 4am... well I certainly don't want to get up that early! So I put him down around 11/12 or so and he sleeps til 5ish and then again til 9ish. That definitely works best for me! I put my [almost] 4 yo to sleep at the same time (tandem nursing and all that) and he sleeps straight through until 9/10. If I put either of them down any earlier, I'm up before dawn and that's just crazy to me.

My oldest is 8 and during the summer, I let him sleep whenever he's tired. Who am I to say that he has to go to sleep just because of what a clock says? Toward the end of summer we get back into a bedtime routine. His bedtime has been 8:30. Now that he's a little bit older we may play with a 9pm bedtime and see if he's still rested in the morning.

He's of course allowed to crash at any point before that but 8:30 has been the time where we tell him it's time for him to turn in for the night. He's awful to wake up in the morning (and mean!) if he hasn't had enough sleep so it's definitely a needed for him....for a baby though? I can't see why it's so important for a baby to have a "bedtime"

Idk I guess they do get into habits where they nap and go to bed at approx. the same time every night but it's not a set thing here. Some nights my little guy is pooped and wants to go to sleep as early as 9 others my youngest 2 are up til like 2-3am. That may seem excessive but being a SAHM and not having anywhere to go the next day I just kind of go with the flow.

Lisbeth - posted on 07/13/2010

Routine is that really possible with a baby?

Marcy - posted on 07/12/2010

Same thing...we never really did a bedtime or routine. Some nights it all seems to work out bath, books, snack, cuddles, boob and bed. Other nights its tv, ice cream, no reading and hubby and son wrestling tournament on the bed. Either way he seems to go to bed somewhere between 8 and 9 at night...when he was younger it seemed to be much later but now that he is turning 4 years old he is exhausted from school and playing hard so he typically crashes around the same time.....

Victoria - posted on 07/12/2010

Hi Jamie,

Wow I have been having the exact same worries. It's so nice to hear that another Mum is doing it the same way as me. I wait for Willow to look tired (I watch her cues), I then bath and then nurse to sleep. And just like you sometimes she doesn't go to sleep until 10 so we just keep her downstairs until she is ready. I too have been worried that she doens't have a routine blah blah but the other alternative is to put her in our bed and leave her to cry !!!! And I am NEVER going to do that so really this is the only way. Lets face it we watch their cues during the day so why don't we just continue at nightime !! Makes sense really doesn't it ?

Taralee - posted on 07/05/2010

LOL...Schedule...that's a good one..lol. But seriously, my DD seems to have a pattern for a few days and then it changes, so we have never had a schedule. Plus I am an Aquarius....schedule is an obscene word to me. People use to ask me what my daughter BF schedule was, and I always replied with, "when she is hungry, she cries and I offer the breast", the looks I got were enough to kill you. So you just keep doing what works best for your little one...sounds to me like you are doing a great job!

Vicki - posted on 07/05/2010

He's usually tired around 7-8pm, so that's when he normally goes to bed. It's sometimes letter or earlier though. We do bath, story, then boob to sleep. It seems to help send him off. There's no other sleeping/feeding routine for the rest of the day and night.

Brenda - posted on 07/04/2010

Routines.. bah. Drivel. Only schedule a baby needs it what they set. Doing the same thing in tge same order is ok but I don't even do that.

Geralyn - posted on 07/04/2010

We don't have a bedtime... we have a bed "range" ... between 8:30 and 9:30. A lot of it depends on when my son goes down for a nap (which is a bit of a moving target these days), and the length of his nap.... He is indicating that he is tired and ready for "shoulder" probably about 1/3 of the time now... We do "shoulder" most nights for him to drift off, but it only takes about 5-10 minutes. He is also starting to ask to lie down on the bed to drift off, which is a positive step.... We follow a routine of sorts - in terms of the order in which we do things - but its not set minute-by-minute by the clock...

Sheree - posted on 07/04/2010

my 4 month old babe seems to be making his own routine. my toddler thrives on her bedtime bath, book, bed and babe usually has bath, massage, boob and sleeps. Sometimes he doesn't want to and if he is happy to be awake i don't mind, my toddler how ever will keep on keeping on way into the night and ends up overtired with a massive meltdown. my anti-routine ways changed when i saw how well she responded when we fixed an earlier bedtime. I believe it to be age relavent. Assuming your little one still naps, eleven hours at night is fine in my opinion. if your daughter is happy with staying awake and you are too, you are NOT hurting anyone. Behavious should indicate whether ir not she is well rested

Minnie - posted on 07/03/2010

Eh...I think the 'infants thrive on routine' mantra comes from our schedule-driven society. What did/do people do without clocks? In a hunter-gatherer culture baby is strapped to mother's body and nurses/sleeps when he feels hungry or tired. He goes throughout the day experiences the changes in temperature, light, motion as his mother takes care of her duties.

Babies won't deny their needs. We just need to be receptive to meeting them. For some parents routine helps, but others don't see much of a need for that.

Emily - posted on 07/02/2010

No, you are not hurting her. Babies can't tell time. :) As long as they get enough sleep in whatever way works best for them, I think that's what's important. I don't have a "bedtime" for my baby. Not really even one for my 3-year-old, though we'll probably set one when school starts. I find it pretty silly to try to force someone to go to sleep. Tried it with my first child. Lost cause. LOL Much easier to put them to bed when they're actually tired, not just because a clock says a certain time.