How to Start Getting Baby into Bedtime and Sleeping Routine

Pick up The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. I just started reading it and implementing some of her ideas with my 5 month old who has been sleeping in a swing (or on my lap) for months.

I'm a hater of Babywise and lover of The No Cry Sleep Solution as well. The latter recommends 4 months as the transitional stage for getting to sleep. Just hold your daughter and enjoy this time when she's little--it will be over soon! All the best!

I agree with Julie D., enjoy holding your baby. This is how she bonds with you, and it will be over before you know it. You can never hold and comfort a newborn too much! It sounds like you are doing just fine. Don't worry about letting her fall asleep on you. If you are both comfortable and she is safe laying on your chest, I don't think you have to worry about rolling off the couch or chair onto her. I fell asleep many nights in the recliner with my babies on my chest and never felt like they were in danger. Trust your mommy instincts!

The best advice I received was to keep kids in a routine. Like you stated, your little one still needs special treatment for a while. I started my son on a routine immediately upon coming home though. And by that I mean we started bath time every night at 7. After bath I lotioned him up and got him in his PJ's. Then he got a bottle. Most of the time he did fall asleep in my arms but then went right down in his own 'bed'. I have faithfully kept that routine since he came home from the hospital and he is 2 now. We have no problems with bed time as he knows what to expect. We still do baths every night which is his cue that bed time is around the corner. Obviously the night time feeding is done but he is ready for bed after his bath. He has never slept with me or in my bed either and I think that helps.

I had a baby that was nocturnal until he was about 3 months old. The ped. suggested that I set a bed time routine that was easily recognized that included a bath every night. So my routine was bath, PJ's, feeding, bed. I put him in bed whether he was awake or asleep. (he was also a binky baby so it helped). At first he was upset, and every 15 min. I would check on him, but not pick him up until his next scheduled feeding time. ( I feed him every 3-4 hours). Within a week (no kidding) He not only was going to bed on his own, but he was sleeping a 6 hour stretch. I have shared this with numerous other new mom's and they also have had huge successes and it is easy and you don't need to read a book! Next, never let your kid sleep with you and don't feed them in your bed. It is hard to break the habit. Feed them in a chair next to their bed (I do it in a recliner, so if I happen to doze off I can be comfortable for a few minutes), but put them straight back to bed. I take blankets and cover their bed and I cover them with a blanket that I can wrap them in when I put them in their bed, so that they don't get placed into a cold bed (waking them up).

Do you swaddle her when you put her to sleep on her own? The security of the blanket holding them gives them the feeling of being held. All three of my boys were swaddle babies. I got really good at it!! My husband said I was the best swaddler in the west. LOL

At two months we were still swaddling, which made a huge difference in her ability to go to sleep. As we got into a bed time routine, we purposefully kept it very simple. I don't want to have to give her a bath and read 5 books every night for her to want to go to bed. At this point (she's 2, so things are different, of course) we put her in her sleep sack, read one book, hugs and kisses, and off to bed. I know others who have pretty elaborate routines with baths, specific books and songs, and various other routines, but it takes forever and is had for a sitter to replicate! You're wise to be thinking ahead, but still keeping your expectations reasonable for such a young baby. Good luck and rest well when you can!

I think you are on the right track. It was very important to me to have my children learn to sleep on their own as soon as possible. I've had 3 kids in the last 5 years & they've all been great sleepers...but not without some work on my part. I would highly recommend the book, "How to Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Richard Ferber. He explains everything about sleep (he's a sleep scientist) and how to get babies sleeping through the night & with a healthy routine & schedule. It is SOOO worth the time to read it. That being said, I'll give you my tips starting at 2 months of age...
1)establish a routine of feeding her when she wakes, having some awake time, and then sleeping - never feed/nurse her to sleep.
2)continue to put her down in her crib at the first sign of sleepiness (rubbing eyes, yawning, thousand mile stare). Lay her in her crib drowsy, but still awake. If she fusses leave her. If she cries, pick her up & comfort her. Keep trying with this & she will eventually get the hang of it.
3)set a bedtime routine - it can be simple - it just needs to be consistent, i.e. bath, bottle/nursing, song, crib.
4)Avoid all sleep associations that will not be there when she wakes in the middle of the night - no rocking, nursing, holding, music, sound, etc. If she needs you to go to sleep at the beginning of the night, she'll need you in the middle of the night, too.
5)At 5-6 months of age, start sleep training as described by Ferber. His method lets kids know that their crib is a good thing, that they can go to sleep on their own, but that mom is always available & they're not being abandoned. It has worked wonders for us. It's a little work for a week or so & then it pays off BIG TIME. Once they learn to go to sleep by themselves, life is good. I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to get up in the middle of the night with a kid (other than when they are sick) since my kids were 7 mo., 4 mo. & 3 1/2 mo. old (they are now 5 yrs, 3 yrs, & 17 months old).

Good luck! And try not to worry about the people who think that unless you hold your kids every second of the day for the first 2 years of their lives you will have kids with attachment disorders. It's simply not true. Lots of holding is really good for babies in the first 3 months - you can't hold them too much. But as they near 6 months, they need to learn to be okay on their own a little bit unless you want a kid who will always need you at their side. My kids still love to snuggle and have special time with me & their dad...but they are also just fine playing on their own & with each other and they feel confident enought to love being with friends and at preschool without screaming when I leave. That extends to sleeping as well. They all go to sleep by themselves in their own beds and sleep through the night without crying and have from a very young age. Hang in there & if you ever have any sleep questions, feel free to message me.

Having her fall asleep with you while laying on you is super dangerous. If you are in a deep sleep you could very easily lay over on her. I know our mommy alarms are on too but my son did this a few times with me and it really freaked me out I was so tired that I fell asleep too.
She is young, there is not a routine you can expect however you can continue to snuggle, love her and swaddle her, after feedings just lay her down and don't hold her until she falls asleep. It is hard at this age I know many nights I loved just rocking my babies to sleep and holding them while they slept, both are GREAT sleepers I just didn't let that habit continue. For right now I think it is fine this young.
I just always tried to change, feed, burp and lay my babies down while they were still awake. My son would wake at about 3am and after he ate he wanted to lay on my chest, I was so tired I fell asleep and that is so scary!!!!! If you want her to sleep in her own crib, lay her down there, awake as much as you can, make noise so she gets used to noise during the day and put her there for naps and bedtimes. Both of my kids did great in beds. My son slept in a bassinett in my room until he was 5 mos old and he transitioned just fine into a crib and not needing me to hold him all night. I ran the vacuum during the day, didn't keep the noise down during the day so my kids learned to sleep through it all. Try setting on a voice activated music box/sound machine. That was my life saver too. I got one that would kick on if the baby fussed and would put on sounds of the ocean or music and go for 5 minutes slowlying winding down. I would say 60% of the time my kids fell back to sleep once that kicked on. A 2 mos old needs your immediate attention though and not until after 6 mos mark did I ever even consider crying it or fussing it out. When I waited it worked a lot of times if I knew they weren't hungry.

Neither of mine slept through the night until almost 10 mos so all babies vary. Don't expect a 8 hour stretch for a long time! :)
Hang in there, enjoy this time, it goes by so very fast. I miss that snuggling a newborn, them holding my fingers while they ate and all of that!!!!!

Congrats on being a mom! I to just hd my first child January 27th. I am also working on getting a sleep routine down with my daughter. Luckily for me once she gets to sleep at night, I am working on getting her to fall asleep on her own also, but once she is alseep she usually sleeps for abut five hours, wakes up to nurse and then goes back to sleep for another 3 hours. My problem is during the day. She isn't taking very good naps. But anyway. My sister in-law has her kids on a schedule that is like clockwork. They fall asleep on their own. She says her secret is using the book "On Becoming babywise" I am reading it right now and am going to try to apply its principles. She swears by it and I have isnce found some other mom who swear by it, so I am going to reccommend it for you. Good luck

I would recommend the book BabyWise (with all the extra time you have for reading :)
A few key things that helped me:

sleeping and eating patterns are very connected. Make your first feeding of the morning at the same time, eventually a patten will develop because each day starts the same. If you keep track of the time for each feeding, then you can look for a pattern over time that is natually developing and encourage it.

We did feeding upon waking from naps rather than before sleeping so that baby wasn't dependent on eating in order to fall asleep.

newborns will tend to fall asleep while eating, but try to wake them up and to get a full feeding in- think big meals, rather than all day snacks in order to encourage an eating/sleeping pattern.

I always put my baby in his crib to sleep. He might have fallen asleep elsewhere, but waking up in his crib meant that he associated the crib with sleep. Then when we had enough of a pattern to determine times for naps, I could sometimes manage to put him down still a little bit awake so that he could learn to fall asleep by himself in the crib.

When she wakes in the middle of the night, feed her and put her right back to bed. Don't talk to her or give her signals that it is play time; give every signal that night is for sleeping.

All of this paid off for us--My almost two year old is a terrific sleeper! 11-12 hours of solid sleep at night and 2-3 hour nap. He is happy to go to bed and take a nap when it is time.

My book recommendation is "Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child"... it will be useful for YEARS!

I value my sleep, too! The best advice anyone ever gave me about caring for a baby is "watch your baby, not the clock." It's practical and sentimental--your baby knows when she's hungry and since your milk production is all supply and demand, it's important to nurse her on cue, especially in these early months when she is hitting so many growth spurts and is just burning up allthose calories. It's important to remember that swallowing is a reflex, so while she will continue to take milk dripping into her mouth from a bottle, some comforting non-nutritive sucking at the breast would be just as satisfying and also help keep your supply up.
The medical definition of "sleeping through the night" is a four to five-hour stretch. If your baby sleeps longer than one six-hour stretch in a 24-hour cycle at this age, there's a risk of dehydration and failure to thrive. (Yes, I know some babies just sleep a lot longer, but it's not typical and those moms have to feed them very often when they're awake.)
Keep in mind that frequent nursing and needing human contact is not a bad habit, but a legitimate need. If you meet her needs completely, she will be able to outgrow them peacefully.
Setting her down after she's done nursing and is about to doze off will help you reach your goals of independent sleep. But it's important not to let your baby waste her calories fussing for contact with you when she needs them to learn and grow. I think you sound like a sensitive and responsive mom. You might like the book "The Baby Book" by Dr. William Sears. I also just love "The Happiest Baby on the Block" by Dr. Harvey Karp.Consider contacting your local La Leche League Leader and attending a LLL meeting--they are so nice and all services are free. there's even a free lending libary of excellent books and DVDs. You'll be able to hear form lots of like-minded moms about their sleep strategies. Find your local group at www.llli.org.

Of course every child is different, but my little girl at 3 months started sleeping in her own room and through the night...

We started to give her a formula bottle right before bed (which was 6pm sharp) That seemed to hold her through the night. The rest of the day was strictly breastfeeding.

In her room we made it VERY dark and had white noise. In the summer it was a fan and now that it is winter we have a humidifier that is noisy. Not one any adult would want, but for her it is perfect. We don't go anywhere overnight without it.

She really has been on a 6pm-6am schedule every since and she is now 9 months old. Of course there are nights where nothing goes right, but for the most part it all works out.
We never have allowed her to sleep with us, so she never has that urge to demand it.

The key was getting her to bed early (6pm) and filling her tummy. I was never so concerned about the fact that she would fall asleep during the bottle feed. But some nights she isn't totally asleep and we put her down and she only cries for 5 minutes or less and even that it isn't a deep cry.
We did end up getting her a glow worm so she could have some music and light. We do hear her turn it on in the middle of the night and play for a bit, but then she goes right back to sleep. We recently added one of those fake aquarium things and that has been a hit. I wish I had done it sooner. The one from Baby Eisenstein is great because it goes for 25 minutes and gradually shuts off.

Anyhow those are our tricks and they have seemed to work.
I think just sticking too it and follow through are key. Her daytime naps were a whole other story that took weeks to get down, but we just kept at it and sleep for her is nearly on a military precision :)

I'm always shocked when I hear people still read On being Babywise....I've had personal experience with a friend who followed the advice in the book and then ended up with a baby who had bonding issues. Trust me, the web is full of similar stories. The book was not written from a place of love, 'nuff said. There is an alternative in the Baby Whisperer, advice on getting your kids into an expected pattern so they can become reliant on themselves to sleep and play. The best advice is to 'start as you mean to go on' (if you let baby fall asleep on you, imagine a 35# toddler falling asleep on you) and following you own, loving instincts as a mom. GL!! Congrats on the new little one!

We used the book "Babywise" for our first, and she was sleeping about 6 or so hours at 12 weeks. My friend has one of the authors as a pediatrician, and he said that *physiologically*, your baby does not need that middle of the night feed from about 9 lbs/2 months on, approximately. It is more of an emotional feed. You sound like you fit the profile of someone who whould like this book, since you have already realized the value getting your child to sleep. It's basically an eat-wake-sleep routine but get the book, since there is a little more to it. My second was born January 12, a preemie, and my husband and I are desperate to get him through the night, too! But of course, he is smaller than an average baby and so he is only sleeping 3 or so hours at a time now. But his routine is great! Good luck, keep on it, and congrats on your daughter. Try to enjoy every minute, even the middle of the night ones where you think it will never end.

Congratulation on being a new mom. I have a 4 1/2 year old and 3 month old. I noticed on my newborn that he would wake every couple of hours and wasn't getting any sleep. My friend told me to swaddle him at naps and bedtime. Once I started that he sleeps really well. It really gives the baby security. She told me the baby will wave their arms and it will wake them. After watching my son sleep both ways, I swaddle him in a blanket and he sleeps better. I would try this and put the baby in the crib right after eating. Good luck.

T.,

congrats on your new baby! I know that you know that a 2 month old isn't going to be on a routine schedule, but what helped us was a wonderful DVD called Happiest BAby on The Block. It really helped us. Our daughter is 6 months old now, but I have to tell you she still doesn't sleep through the night and still waskes up at least twice duing the night for feedings. But try happiest baby on the block it realy helped us.

Congrats on your little girl...babies are the best! First of all, I don't think it's ever too early to start establishing a routine for your baby. Let me tell you what worked for me - and you can take it or leave it. I read the book "Babywise" and followed it pretty closely. They help you understand the need for a routine and how to make it work. They say that it'll have your baby sleeping through the night by 2 months, and that's exactly what happened to me. Good luck - hope you and baby get some sleep.

I agree with Heather. Babywise. It's by Gary Ezzo. The routine is flexible and works great. I did it with all three of my kids. One slept through the night starting at 2 weeks, one, who had less of a routine, was at 3 months, and one at 8 weeks, starting on and off at 7 weeks. The other thing that helped us with our second, and some with our third, was the video "The Happiest Baby on the Block". Since your little one likes to be held, it might really help. Anyway, congratulations!

Hi T.,

My son was born 12/9 and we followed the advice from the book "baby wise." It discusses feeding patterns and how they impact your baby's sleep patterns. There is also a chapter on getting your baby to get on a schedule. We put our son down when he is drowsy and sometimes he cries a bit, but it is not that long. He goes 4-5 hours between night feedings and then goes right back to bed. This worked for my older son as well. I highly recommend it.
Good luck!

I have to put in another vote AGAINST Babywise (it is scary how many people still think this is a good method), and another vote in favor of "The No Cry Sleep Solution" (a wonderful alternative to the cry-it-out thing). Also, I just want to encourage you simply to enjoy your little one right now. How I miss those times when my baby would fall asleep with me, either on my chest or lying next to me. (My husband and I have co-slept with all of our babies.) Listen to your heart and give your baby what she needs right now - YOU. :)

Give her time. There is no need for a baby to learn to fall asleep on her own at this age. I rocked, nursed, and cuddled all my kids to sleep until they were 1 or older. With my first, I tried to teach her to go to bed on her own, but it was a nightmare. My other two I didn't really worry so much about it. They are now 10, 8, & 5, and they climb into bed, get a quick tuck in & kiss and that's all I do. Enjoy the time you have yo rock & cuddle your baby. She'll grow up fast enough. My 10 year old has decided that she's 'too old' for hugs & kisses each night!

Pay lose attention to when she starts getting sleepy at night and start the bedtime routine about an hour before that. At this age, my daughter needed it to be very rigid in order to keep her on track. This was our routine. After bath, there were no overhead lights. Everything must be calm, quiet, and dark.

Dinner
Bath (if necessary)
Massage (we tooka great infant massage class at the hospital)
Jammies
Wash gums with cloth
Book/Song
Swaddle
Lights out
Rock for the duration of one lulliby
Down for bed with she same phrase (ours is "sleepy night-night, mommy and daddy love you")

Now that she is one it is a little more lax.

Dinner
Bath (if necessary)
Warm Milk
Lotion (she won't stay still for much of a massage anymore)
Jammies
Book
Sleepy night-night.
Kisses
Lights out

I would highly recomend "Happiest Baby on the block" in conjunction with "No Cry Sleep Solution" and make a schedule that works for y'all.

I also HIGHLY recommend checking out On Becoming Babywise by Gary Ezzo. I used this method with both my girls and they were both sleeping through the night by 8 weeks and in a solid routine. It's a great system.