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Bedtime Routine

Hi folks, were just after some advice on bedtime routine. Our Joshua is 15 weeks old and we have no problems getting him to sleep of an evening. We feed him around 6:30 and he will then cuddle to sleep to go down around 7. However, we have read that come 5 - 6 months they can get very manipulative (for want of a better word) and have been told that we should look to have him falling to sleep on his own so that he doesn't insist on being cuddled to sleep every night in the long run.



Has anyone else had problems with their LO's getting too clingy at night and not settling down on their own? Anyone got any good tips on how to implement a routine where they settle themselves the final bit to sleep? Have I read something very silly and am worrying about nothing?



Cheers folks

Replies

  • Our LO used to fall asleep on his bottle back when he was a few months old so we just put him down and he was fine, when he got older(he's now 1 years old) we kept to the routine of bath, bottle and bed between 6-7pm. He seems to have kept to this routine and sleeps until 7am. He does go down in his cot awake and we leave the room, we did start reading to him but the longer we were with him in the room he would start to cry when we left, so he's put down and we leave him to it. He normally settles within 5-10 mins. I'm not saying that it's that easy every night but the majority of the time we don't hear from him until the morning. He did go without a dummy when he was about 8 months old for a couple of week then he was ill and wouldn't go to sleep without it, so he will not give up his dummy now at nights, we do however take it from him once he's asleep as he did keep waking when it used to fall out of his mouth. He does still look for it some nights but very rarely. This is how we started weaning him off the last time.



    I don't think that a little cuddle before putting them down spoils them especially as your LO is still so young, but try to put him down half asleep so that he learns to settle himself, I did find that the more fuss I made before he was put down the longer it took him to settle.



    Good luck. image
  • We have been very lucky (it was nothing we did!) in that our LO has always gotten herself to sleep at bedtime (waking during the night is another matter!) but, like Mandy said, I read that given them their bottle and then just waking them up ever so slightly to put them in their cot means they associate being awake in their cot with then going to sleep.



    HTH x
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