When are you starting a nightly bath/bottle/bed routine?

Question

I have a 2.5 year old who goes to bed about 7:30 and selfishly I just don’t feel like turning around and immediately doing a newborn bath at 8, then bottle then rocking and bed at 9...especially since baby is still basically sleeping anywhere at this point.  Am I making a big sleep mistake by waiting another week or two (we are 3 weeks old now) before I start a consistent bedtime routine?

Answer

My rule of thumb is that the first 12 weeks (@the 4th trimester) is all about survival. I started a bedtime routine with my firstborn at 3 weeks old and we still follow it now, 2+ years later. With this baby, we’re just going with the flow. There’s plenty of time to establish a routine later and I have no desire at this point to spend 2 or more hours doing baths and bedtime routines. Eventually I will, but when baby girl is still so young, I don’t feel strongly enough that it matters 🤷🏼‍♀️

Answer

We started at 2 weeks. Kind of. Every other night we would give her a bath, lotion, pjs. The nights in between she would get lotion and pjs. About an hour later we would put her in her bassinet. From there if she didnt sleep fine. If she did sleep that was fine too. Every morning i would change her into actual clothes. She hit about 5 or 6 weeks old and started screaming daily for a bath. Some days we just let her soak in there and kick the water around. After her bath we would feed her and lay her down. Sometimes she went to sleep on her own. Sometimes we would rock her. Now at 2 months she gets her bath, eats, and goes to sleep on her own around 10-11, sleeps for about 7 hours, wakes up to eat, goes back to bed until 10-11.

Answer

I started day 3 when she got home I have a 10 an 6 year old an they bath at 8:30 an in bed by 9 I bath my now month old at 9 every night an she knows when it's bath time because she gets fussy an if she misses bath time she doesn't sleep good during the night

Answer

I didn't start till 4 weeks and we still aren't fully in routine yet we forget bath time some nights and we are yet to be sleeping in our bedroom.

Answer

I already started this week on Monday. He’s 4 weeks old. Our pediatrician said babies can understand a bedtime routine starting at 6 weeks. I swear, my son has already gotten the hang of it. Since we’ve implemented it he sleeps 4 hours his first stretch of sleep!
We do a bath, lotion and jammies, and then he takes his bottle while I read him a story. Then we run the white noise machine and rock him to sleep.

Answer

We have loosely started a routine at 3weeks. We just do diaper change, pajamas, lotion,,swaddle, breastfeed/read a book. She is our only child so don’t have the issue of another to care for

Answer

We just started this routine last week at 5 weeks. Admittedly we never did this with our first son. Our newest son has colic so we began giving him a warm bath with lavender baby bedtime soap, breastfeeding, swaddle, bed after putting our toddler down. It really relaxes him for bed and I think helps establish a solid routine. I’m glad we are doing it. I would start if your little is having a hard time sleeping. Wouldn’t hurt.

Answer

I have a 4 year old. She bathes every other day unless she has been playing outside then it's daily. I give her a bath then get my almost 4 week old's bath items around and usually she will be waking up for her bathtime. It's usually around 6:30 for my 4 year old and 7ish for my 4 week old. I find a routine is best. Idk I'm still new to having 2 children. It seems to work for us. As soon as my youngest is bathed and dressed it's bottle and snuggles then swaddle and bed. She seems to really relax and fall asleep better.

Answer

We started this week ! (5)

When are you starting a nightly bath/bottle/bed routine?

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