what time should an eight week old go down for the night?

[Anonymous]

I keep reading about early bedtimes and how great they are, but I also know I get the longest sleep stretch out of my DB when he goes down the first time, so I've resisted putting him down at 7 or 8. Instead, he's been going down around 9 or 10, and sometimes it's a struggle, and he is fussy, so I think he's maybe a little overtired. Should I try to put him down earlier??

[Anonymous]

At 8 weeks we were letting my DS fall asleep in his bouncy around 8:30 and then transitioning him to the crib later.

I think we started the bed time routine between 2 and 3 months. Now he's a great sleeper. He let us know when he needed to go to bed earlier.

[Anonymous]

Agree with PP. I was so confused about the early bedtime concept when my DS was that age because he didn't seem to really have a "bedtime", just fell asleep at 10 or 11 and then woke up to eat a few hours later and a few hours after that. But around 3.5 or 4 months, he started falling asleep earlier and staying asleep longer and sort of made it clear that he now had a bedtime and it was pretty early. He is now almost 5 months and goes to bed between 6:30 or 7 and sleeps until 7am (though he does still wake up to eat or sometimes just because, ugh). OP, don't worry about it, your child will make it clear to you when it's time for the early bedtime.

[Anonymous]

OP - you will here different opinions but I had twins and right from the start they developed differnt sleeping patterns - one is a morning sleeper and one is a night-time sleeper - this was apparent very early on and lasted through 5-6 months before they had equal and the same (almost) schedules. So - each child can be different.

At this stage, much depends on his feeding schedule and how long he goes between feedings. Mine were all still eating every 4 hours at this point. What you want to do is pick a time to start stretching out. This gets a bit easier as they are consuming more with each feeding. The biggest goal is to make sure he has his days / nights squared away.

Perhaps the most important advice is to be prepared for a change - few sleep consistently from 8 weeks on. So as soon as you get a pattern , he may decide to change it!

FWIW - we wanted ( b/c of our schedules) to advocate for a later down for the night time for DC - partly in hopes they would sleep in later. So we usually feed babies for the last time at about 11:00 PM. So our nighttime schedules usually went like this -

Nursing at 5:30, 9:00 +/- to bath, play and eat again at 10:00 (11:00 as they spread out BF) and then down for the night. The first goal was to get through to 5:00 AM so we did not start moving back our 11:00 PM feeding until that time. Once they slept through consistently until at least 5:00 we would start to back up the 11:00 PM final nighttime feeding.

[Anonymous]

i might get flamed by the schedule people for this, but i just let my 11-week-old daughter hang out with me on the couch till she falls asleep, and then I put her to bed. typically she has her last bottle around 8:00 and falls asleep around 9 or 9:30, but occasionally it's earlier or later, depending on her naps that day. yesterday she fell asleep pretty early because her naps at daycare were all really short. sometimes she'll take an hour-long nap at 7 or 8.

i'm kind of glad she goes to bed a bit later or i'd never get to see her outside of daycare dropoff and pickup!

she's equally inconsistent about whether she wakes up in the middle of the night or not. sometimes she wakes up at 1 or 2 or 3. other times she sleeps straight through to 6:30 a.m. she usually wakes up at 6:30 though, regardless.

[Anonymous]

My DD would fall asleep around 9-10pmish when she was 8 weeks. Gradually, she started going to sleep earlier.

[Anonymous]

Every baby is different and every family has different dynamics. You do what is best for you.

Like you, OP, we were in the late-bedtime-for-baby camp. It was just the way it worked since DD napped from 6-730ish pm. So we kept her up until 10pm-ish, changed diaper one last time, and nursed and she went to bed around 10pm.

So, we didn't fix what wasn't broken. Putting her to bed "late" (a relative term for newborns) sorta helped us sleep through the night more (awoke at 3am, then again at 8am and eventually the 3am feeding dropped).

And it worked for us and our schedule(s) so we just went with it.

However, now that DD is older her bedtime has moved up (partly because her nap schedule changed) so, no, a 10 pm bedtime isn't forever.

[Anonymous]

I just want to say- this too was something I wondered about for a while..... i didn't like the fluidity of it all- in the sense of "bedtime." I did find the book by Suzy Giordano, the baby sleep solution helpful for me to get a better sense. Around 8 weeks we started out bedtime routine, and it took a few days for it to really take hold. We have twins and one loved to stay up later to after the 7 pm feed, she was ready for another awake time, so I fed her at 7 and kept her in dim light, soft voices but let he be awake a bit- then put her to bed. We just inched back that time awake little by little and got it to her not expecting that time anymore. Our babies are only 4 mo old so I am in no ways an expert, but I vividly recall wondering how to get the bedtime routine/concept down for them. I do think too often people (book recs) err on the side of keeping the babies awake too long in hopes of getting them to sleep later. I know people say each baby is different, and that is so true but when you are doing this the first time, its hard to read all the books/resources that talk about being sure not to let them sleep too much when in our case, they slept better when we let them sleep more. Good luck- you aren't alone!

[Anonymous]

It's a bit paradoxical but putting them to bed earlier allows them to get longer, efficient sleep which prevents them from getting overtired. We were blessed with a good sleeper (I am convinced we will have a terrible sleeper for #2). He has never been able to make it up past 8. When he was around 8 weeks we advanced his bedtime to 7-7:30. He then started sleeping longer stretches. Our son showed clear signs of being tired -rubbing eyes, yawning, fussiness, etc. But again, every baby is different.

[Anonymous]

My son started naturally going down around 7:30 when he was 2 months old, and he's 5 months and it's still between 7-8pm. He'll wake up once or twice to dream feed then get up for real around 6:30-7am.

[Anonymous]

We put our daughter to bed around 10-11ish when she was that age...then when we did the "sleep routine" we would start with the bath at 9ish and then depending on how long she took to nurse, she would be asleep by 10-10:30. She slept until about 8 or so, give or take an hour. Now, we need to get her up at 7ish for day care, so we are starting the routine a little earlier... I wouldn't worry about the bed time as much as getting her to sleep through the night. We are soooo lucky, I'm also in the camp of 20:42... I'm so sure we're going to be screwed on #2!! #1 was a great sleeper from the start - giving us 3-4 hour stretches and quickly sleeping through.