Starting a bedtime ritual

[Akuvikate]

I've gathered that it's never too early to start a bedtime ritual, and
we probably should have already done so. DH and I would like to start
doing one with our 6 week old DD, but are not entirely clear on how
this works. So far we do nothing special except turn off the bright
lights around 9 or 10pm, and she usually nurses off to sleep between
10pm and midnight. Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep? If she's hungry
and wants to nurse until 11:30pm, it's not like we can do our ritual
at 10pm and put her to bed. And I can't always predict when she's
going to drop off -- sometimes she seems really wired and then in the
space of one or two nursings she conks out. So how does a bedtime
ritual work for a baby that you can't verbally explain the concept to?

Kate
and Bug, June 8 2003

[Michelle Podnar]

Your DD is way too young for any type of schedule. She and you are still
solely dictated by her tummy at this time. She will most likely work
herself into a schedule of her own (loosely), and once that happens, you can
tweak it to accommodate you and DH if needed.

Michelle P
"Akuvikate" > wrote in message
om...
> I've gathered that it's never too early to start a bedtime ritual, and
> we probably should have already done so. DH and I would like to start
> doing one with our 6 week old DD, but are not entirely clear on how
> this works. So far we do nothing special except turn off the bright
> lights around 9 or 10pm, and she usually nurses off to sleep between
> 10pm and midnight. Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
> her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep? If she's hungry
> and wants to nurse until 11:30pm, it's not like we can do our ritual
> at 10pm and put her to bed. And I can't always predict when she's
> going to drop off -- sometimes she seems really wired and then in the
> space of one or two nursings she conks out. So how does a bedtime
> ritual work for a baby that you can't verbally explain the concept to?
>
> Kate
> and Bug, June 8 2003

[silvasurfa]

"Akuvikate" > wrote in message
om...
> I've gathered that it's never too early to start a bedtime ritual, and
> we probably should have already done so. DH and I would like to start
> doing one with our 6 week old DD, but are not entirely clear on how
> this works. So far we do nothing special except turn off the bright
> lights around 9 or 10pm, and she usually nurses off to sleep between
> 10pm and midnight. Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
> her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep? If she's hungry
> and wants to nurse until 11:30pm, it's not like we can do our ritual
> at 10pm and put her to bed. And I can't always predict when she's
> going to drop off -- sometimes she seems really wired and then in the
> space of one or two nursings she conks out. So how does a bedtime
> ritual work for a baby that you can't verbally explain the concept to?
>
> Kate
> and Bug, June 8 2003

6 weeks is too young for any sort of ritual, at that age they tend to fall
asleep whenever, wherever.

However, you can get her used to something like soft music or being patted
gently or a particular lighting level or nursing lying down if you want to
make the night time routine consistently different.

Rituals tend to emerge bit by bit.

[Sue]

Well six weeks is a little early to do any kind of routine. I pretty much
did the same things for bedtime, but if they woke up in the middle of the
night, well then I just took care of their needs and went back to bed as
quickly as I could. However, it was around six months for each baby before a
loose routine was even established. By then, I was able to do the same
things each night for bed and they were pretty much sleeping through the
night at that point, but nothing was written in stone. If it was bath night,
we did bath, feed, rock and sing and then I laid them down. Most of the time
it worked. If I was you, I don't think I would try to do any scheduling
right now. Hang in there though, it will come. :o)
--
Sue
mom to three girls

Akuvikate > wrote in message
om...
> I've gathered that it's never too early to start a bedtime ritual, and
> we probably should have already done so. DH and I would like to start
> doing one with our 6 week old DD, but are not entirely clear on how
> this works. So far we do nothing special except turn off the bright
> lights around 9 or 10pm, and she usually nurses off to sleep between
> 10pm and midnight. Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
> her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep? If she's hungry
> and wants to nurse until 11:30pm, it's not like we can do our ritual
> at 10pm and put her to bed. And I can't always predict when she's
> going to drop off -- sometimes she seems really wired and then in the
> space of one or two nursings she conks out. So how does a bedtime
> ritual work for a baby that you can't verbally explain the concept to?
>
> Kate
> and Bug, June 8 2003

[Ericka Kammerer]

Akuvikate wrote:

> I've gathered that it's never too early to start a bedtime ritual, and
> we probably should have already done so. DH and I would like to start
> doing one with our 6 week old DD, but are not entirely clear on how
> this works. So far we do nothing special except turn off the bright
> lights around 9 or 10pm, and she usually nurses off to sleep between
> 10pm and midnight. Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
> her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep? If she's hungry
> and wants to nurse until 11:30pm, it's not like we can do our ritual
> at 10pm and put her to bed. And I can't always predict when she's
> going to drop off -- sometimes she seems really wired and then in the
> space of one or two nursings she conks out. So how does a bedtime
> ritual work for a baby that you can't verbally explain the concept to?


I don't think you have to approach it so rigidly. For a
little baby like this, I would just tend in the general direction
of a bedtime routine. What we do is try to give signals that
bedtime is approaching. Eventually, Genevieve will go to bed at
8pm just like her brothers, so when it's bedtime we change her
into PJs (I know it doesn't make a *real* difference with most
newborn clothes, but the act of changing into PJs is a signal
that's useful) and after that, the house is quieter and darker.
We don't arbitrarily plop her in bed at a specific time or after
a specific set of activities, but she starts to get the idea
that bedtime is approaching and she starts winding down. As
time goes by, she'll get more and more attuned to the timing
and eventually she'll be ready to go to bed at 8pm (though that'll
take a while--right now it's better if she doesn't conk out until
later so that her big sleep is while we're asleep). If you want
to throw in a bath, bedtime can be a good time for that (if
bathing relaxes her--if not, save that for daytime!). I don't
think things have to be elaborate. Just tend in the direction
you eventually want to go. I think this is hardest to do with
the first child. Once there are already older kids in the house,
you naturally acclimate the newborn to the current schedule
because it's already driving your lifestyle.

Best wishes,
Ericka

[dragonlady]

In article >,
(Akuvikate) wrote:

> I've gathered that it's never too early to start a bedtime ritual, and
> we probably should have already done so. DH and I would like to start
> doing one with our 6 week old DD, but are not entirely clear on how
> this works. So far we do nothing special except turn off the bright
> lights around 9 or 10pm, and she usually nurses off to sleep between
> 10pm and midnight. Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
> her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep? If she's hungry
> and wants to nurse until 11:30pm, it's not like we can do our ritual
> at 10pm and put her to bed. And I can't always predict when she's
> going to drop off -- sometimes she seems really wired and then in the
> space of one or two nursings she conks out. So how does a bedtime
> ritual work for a baby that you can't verbally explain the concept to?
>
> Kate
> and Bug, June 8 2003

I don't know that I'd call it a "ritual", exactly, but almost as soon as
the babies came home, I always changed them into different clothes at
night (some sort of pajamas or sleepers) that they didn't wear any other
time, and kept lights dimmer at night. We didn't do any loud or
rambunctious playing at night. What time all of this started varied a
bit -- mostly, I was trying to get them to think of the hours between
roughly 10 and 8 as sleep/quiet time instead of play time. The
bath/book/singing routine didn't start until they were considerably
older than 6 weeks -- though I often sang lullabies, I sang to them
frequently during the day, too.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

[Beth Kevles]

Hi -

Did you see Ericka's advice? It's excellent. I didn't save the text,
but basically she said that you do the same things every night so that
your baby starts to associate what you do with "winding down" and
gradually becomes ready to go to sleep. Over time, the going to sleep
bit will (hopefull) get easier. The infant "ritual" can simply be
something like
bath
change into pajamas
go into sleeping room
dim the lights
nurse and drop off
get put into the sleeping space, already asleep

You can do this at whatever time suits YOU. In our house, infants went
to sleep minutes before *I* was ready to go to sleep, in hopes that I'd
get a long stretch of snooze in before the first nursing session.
(Since, in the beginning the infant was in charge of bedtime's TIME, I
went to sleep at widely variable hours.)

As your baby gets older, the ritual will change. You may add in some
time to play in the crib, or story time. You may switch the positions
of falling asleep and getting into the sleeping space. (Ie, get into bed
awake, THEN fall asleep.) And you'll almost certainly start to enforce a
specific bedtime by the time your child is ready to start school or
daycare. Our kids used to go to sleep at around 11pm when they were
infants. (And they cluster nursed for the four hours prior ...) When
they started nursery school we moved to an 8pm bedtime, in hopes of
having them wake up cheerful in the morning. Now that they're in
elementary school, bedtime has moved to 8:30 or 9:00, and they still
wake up cheerful.

Other changes in the routine ... we used to read together to the kids
before bedtime. Then they started to play together and get
rambunctious, so we switched to separate reading times. THen my older
son started to prefer to read to himself most of the time. And
somewhere in there, maybe when they were 2 and 4 years old? we added in
a trip to the "dreamstore" so they could pick out good dreams, have
something to think about while nodding off, and not worry about
nightmares or monsters. (My husband gets credit for that one; a
brilliant idea.)

I hope this helps,
--Beth Kevles

http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html -- a page for the milk-allergic
Disclaimer: Nothing in this message should be construed as medical
advice. Please consult with your own medical practicioner.

[Phoebe & Allyson]

Akuvikate wrote:

> Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
> her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep?


I don't think you do. Caterpillar (almost 8 weeks - wow,
does time fly!) is either very predictable, or our lives are
so completely without structure that they adapt to whatever
she happens to do at any given moment, and I still haven't
figured out any special nighttime things.

We don't do pajamas (she gets changed when her clothes are
dirty, or sometime in the 36 hours after putting them on, if
I've managed to keep her clean). She loves a bath, but
baths dry her out too much to make them an everyday thing,
especially if there's a chance she'll need another one
following the morning diaper explosion. No special music,
or story, or anything like that, and she's not always in the
mood to appreciate them.

What we do is: when I'm ready to go to bed, I carry all her
stuff into the bedroom, with her either over my shoulder or
in the sling. So we make 4 or 6 trips back and forth. The
bedroom is cooler and darker and quieter than the rest of
the house. I put her down on the bed awake (she'll rarely
take a daytime nap on the bed, and if she does, she's always
asleep when I put her down). If she's shiny-eyed and happy,
we play for awhile. I talk to her while she amuses herself
and I get ready for bed (during the day, she doesn't get a
lot of self-amusing time). So much self-amusement usually
leads to agitated flailing. Then I lie down next to her and
either give her a finger to suck or a snuggle if she's not
hungry. When she gets hungry, then she nurses, gets changed
into a disposable diaper for the night, and nurses again.
If she's still really awake and happy, she'll get some
bare-bottom play time before the second nursing. Then she
either lies down next to me or on Allyson's chest, we turn
out the bedside light, and everyone goes to sleep. If she's
not sleepy, she can either amuse herself or suck a finger
while we snuggle her, but lights off is the end of playtime.

Normally, she's asleep after the 11pm feeding, but last
night she wasn't very hungry then, and didn't stay asleep
until after a 1am feeding. Our ritual, such as it is,
doesn't really mean bedtime until the light is out, so I
just stayed up and read until she was ready.

Phoebe :)

[Patti Mitchell]

I don't think 6 weeks is young at all. My baby had a routine at 8 weeks and
was sleeping through the night. Just be consistent every night with what
you do.

This is my second baby and this is what I do. Give her a bath around 6:30
and a bottle soon after that. We wake her at 10:30 for another bottle and
she's out until at least 7:00am the next morning.

Good luck!


"Akuvikate" > wrote in message
om...
> I've gathered that it's never too early to start a bedtime ritual, and
> we probably should have already done so. DH and I would like to start
> doing one with our 6 week old DD, but are not entirely clear on how
> this works. So far we do nothing special except turn off the bright
> lights around 9 or 10pm, and she usually nurses off to sleep between
> 10pm and midnight. Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
> her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep? If she's hungry
> and wants to nurse until 11:30pm, it's not like we can do our ritual
> at 10pm and put her to bed. And I can't always predict when she's
> going to drop off -- sometimes she seems really wired and then in the
> space of one or two nursings she conks out. So how does a bedtime
> ritual work for a baby that you can't verbally explain the concept to?
>
> Kate
> and Bug, June 8 2003

[P. Tierney]

"lovey" > wrote:
>
> i'm really not a great one for routine, but i've heard kids *thrive* on
it-
> who knows, i might thrive on it too! : ]

Some kids thrive on it, but many do fine without it.


P. Tierney

[Phoebe & Allyson]

Patti Mitchell wrote:

> We wake her at 10:30 for another bottle and
> she's out until at least 7:00am the next morning.

As the mom of an 8 week old breastfed baby (which is what
Kate will have in 2 weeks), I'd really rather she didn't
sleep 9 1/2 hours at a stretch.

Caterpillar will go a 6-hour stretch a few times a week, but
that's her doing. She could just as easily be waking every
hour through the night. I wouldn't think it was my fault
(or bad parenting, or anything else I was doing wrong) if
she woke frequently, so I'm hesitant to congratulate myself
when she wakes infrequently.

Phoebe :)

[Daye]

On 23 Jul 2003 23:27:49 -0700, (Akuvikate)
wrote:

> Here's what I don't understand -- how do we get
>her to associate whatever ritual we start with sleep?

Well, at 6 weeks old, I doubt she will understand. However, if it
makes you feel better, you can start a ritual. As she grows and gets
older, she will understand and associate it with sleep.

I wouldn't push the routine, and I would be extremely flexible with
her. She will wake when she is hungry -- not because it is any
certain time. She will sleep when she is tired -- not because it is
any certain time.

--
==Daye==
Momma to Jayan
#2 EDD 11 Jan 2004
E-mail: brendana AT labyrinth DOT net DOT au

[Kereru]

"Michelle Podnar" > wrote in message
.. .
> Your DD is way too young for any type of schedule.

I don't know about that. We had a schedule starting to emerge at six weeks.
We did everything in the same order rather than at the same time. I think we
started with a bath in the evening then a feed after the bath when baby was
ready. Then it was the same song and blanket and same way of swaddling every
time he went into his bassinette.

So he still dictated what time he was hungry etc.. but we tried to keep
everything as consistent as possible in terms of the order it all came in.

Some kids take to a schedual like a duck to water some are happier without
one. If your baby seems to follow pattern every day perhaps you can start to
form a routine. If not don't stress and go with the flow it won't do any
harm. Do what works for you.

If there is one thing you can say about babies for sure that is that they
are all different!

Judy

[Akuvikate]

Eeek, just to clarify -- I in no way meant to imply that I expect to
get her on any kind of schedule! What inspired this post is that I
read a study on infant massage in the first weeks of life to regulate
babies sleep/wake cycles (came out a couple of years ago, and showed
that two weeks of nighttime massage starting between day of life 10-14
helped babies sleep patterns become more regulated). It said that for
brand new babies, social cues are more important than light and dark
in adjusting their day/night behavior. We're not giving her much in
the way of social cues, and I just couldn't figure out how to start
doing so. Clearly she goes to sleep when she goes to sleep, but if
there's some behavior I can do that over the course of days or weeks
will start her mind and body down the path to dreamland, it'd be nice.

Kate
and Bug, June 8 2003

[Ericka Kammerer]

Akuvikate wrote:

> I spoze I should have been a little clearer -- I didn't mean "starting
> a ritual" to imply "planning to stick to a rigid schedule". At the
> moment, her bedtime is totally and completely driven by her. I
> figured this made the most sense at this age, but in a study about
> infant massage and sleep I read that young infants get more of their
> day/night orientation from social cues than from changes in lighting.
> Her social cues are pretty minimal right now. I realize that even if
> we start trying to give her some it may be a while before they have
> any effect. But for those nights where I'm exhausted and she's
> nursing until midnight, it's an appealing thought that we could do
> something that she'd associate with drifting off into dreamland.
> Though then perhaps she'll just wake up sooner for more -- sigh.


It's a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process, but it
*does* work for most babies!


> (Jeez, Phoebe, a 6 hour strech? I'm envious! Bug earlier would go as
> long as four hours between feedings, but has backpedaled down to 2 --
> sometimes less.)


I'm probably going to get punished for saying this, but
Genevieve is already (3 weeks) giving us a 5-6 hour stretch most
nights, which I can barely believe (and am very grateful for).
She tends to cluster nurse for a while beforehand. I'm sure
she'll backslide now and again as well (should be a growth spurt
sometime soon...)

Take care,
Ericka

[Sue]

I know how hard it is to be sleep deprived and all you wish is that the baby
would sleep. You are on the right track though by giving cues that it is
sleepy time. She will catch on eventually. I usually did the same things at
pretty much the same times, give or take and depended totally on the babies.
But, I was pretty happy that by six months, we had a fairly good routine
that I could count on (most of the time ;o)

I like routines and I do think more kids do better with a schedule or a
routine than not having one. It gives them some structure in their lives.
--
Sue
mom to three girls

Akuvikate > wrote in message
om...
> I spoze I should have been a little clearer -- I didn't mean "starting
> a ritual" to imply "planning to stick to a rigid schedule". At the
> moment, her bedtime is totally and completely driven by her. I
> figured this made the most sense at this age, but in a study about
> infant massage and sleep I read that young infants get more of their
> day/night orientation from social cues than from changes in lighting.
> Her social cues are pretty minimal right now. I realize that even if
> we start trying to give her some it may be a while before they have
> any effect. But for those nights where I'm exhausted and she's
> nursing until midnight, it's an appealing thought that we could do
> something that she'd associate with drifting off into dreamland.
> Though then perhaps she'll just wake up sooner for more -- sigh.
>
> Kate
> and Bug, June 8 2003
>
> (Jeez, Phoebe, a 6 hour strech? I'm envious! Bug earlier would go as
> long as four hours between feedings, but has backpedaled down to 2 --
> sometimes less.)

[Phoebe & Allyson]

Akuvikate wrote:

> (Jeez, Phoebe, a 6 hour strech? I'm envious! Bug earlier would go as
> long as four hours between feedings, but has backpedaled down to 2 --
> sometimes less.)

Caterpillar has always been a good nighttime sleeper,
through no virtue of mine. She's had at least a 3-hour
stretch since she was 2 weeks old, and 2 3-4 hour stretches
since she was 4 weeks old. It's really only in the last
week she's started going 5-6 hours on occasion, and Bug is a
week younger than she is.

But she's not sleeping for 6 hours and then for 4 hours,
which would be heaven. It's more like "nurse from 11:00 to
midnight, sleep from midnight to 5am, nurse somewhere
between 7am and 8am." And last night she ate at midnight,
fell asleep at 12:30, nursed at 4:30, slept until 6:30,
squirmed and fussed fitfully until she really woke up and
ate at 7:30, then yelled for an hour until she managed to
push out her morning poopy diaper.

It seems like people with good sleepers early get horrible
sleepers around 4 months, so maybe our situations will be
reversed.

Phoebe :)

[Tom P]

That's what I did with my son. Worked for us. Same thing every night.
Bath time was magic.
"Beth Kevles" > wrote in message
...
>
> Hi -
>
> Did you see Ericka's advice? It's excellent. I didn't save the text,
> but basically she said that you do the same things every night so that
> your baby starts to associate what you do with "winding down" and
> gradually becomes ready to go to sleep. Over time, the going to sleep
> bit will (hopefull) get easier. The infant "ritual" can simply be
> something like
> bath
> change into pajamas
> go into sleeping room
> dim the lights
> nurse and drop off
> get put into the sleeping space, already asleep
>
> You can do this at whatever time suits YOU. In our house, infants went
> to sleep minutes before *I* was ready to go to sleep, in hopes that I'd
> get a long stretch of snooze in before the first nursing session.
> (Since, in the beginning the infant was in charge of bedtime's TIME, I
> went to sleep at widely variable hours.)
>
> As your baby gets older, the ritual will change. You may add in some
> time to play in the crib, or story time. You may switch the positions
> of falling asleep and getting into the sleeping space. (Ie, get into bed
> awake, THEN fall asleep.) And you'll almost certainly start to enforce a
> specific bedtime by the time your child is ready to start school or
> daycare. Our kids used to go to sleep at around 11pm when they were
> infants. (And they cluster nursed for the four hours prior ...) When
> they started nursery school we moved to an 8pm bedtime, in hopes of
> having them wake up cheerful in the morning. Now that they're in
> elementary school, bedtime has moved to 8:30 or 9:00, and they still
> wake up cheerful.
>
> Other changes in the routine ... we used to read together to the kids
> before bedtime. Then they started to play together and get
> rambunctious, so we switched to separate reading times. THen my older
> son started to prefer to read to himself most of the time. And
> somewhere in there, maybe when they were 2 and 4 years old? we added in
> a trip to the "dreamstore" so they could pick out good dreams, have
> something to think about while nodding off, and not worry about
> nightmares or monsters. (My husband gets credit for that one; a
> brilliant idea.)
>
> I hope this helps,
> --Beth Kevles
>
> http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html -- a page for the
milk-allergic
> Disclaimer: Nothing in this message should be construed as medical
> advice. Please consult with your own medical practicioner.