Bedtime Routine

When you are pregnant and nearing the end of your due date, one piece of advice you often hear is “sleep when the baby sleeps”. Please take this advice! It sounds so cliché but it couldn’t be more true. During the first few weeks, most babies will sleep anytime, anywhere, and it’s so important to take that time and rest for yourself. What I failed to know is that eventually, that goes away. Now forgive me for sounding ignorant, but I just assumed that when babies were tired, they would go to sleep! It’s nighttime, it’s dark, and they have a full belly and have been awake an appropriate amount of time…time for sleep! Wrong. Well, at least it was that way for us. Enter in…bedtime routines. 

Having a bedtime routine signals to your baby that it is time for sleep! Think about your own bedtime routine. It’s probably not elaborate, but you likely brush your teeth, put on your pajamas, crawl into bed, maybe read a book or watch TV, and then turn off the light and go to sleep. For babies, a good bedtime routine can help cement healthy, lifelong sleep habits. 

So when and where do you start? This will vary from person to person, but in our opinion, 8 weeks old is a good time to start. I’m not talking about a rigid bedtime routine or set bedtime just yet, but this is a good time to start setting these sleep foundations. Also, by this time, you have probably identified what time your baby goes to sleep for their longest stretch of time. At this age, a lot of babies are night owls and go to sleep at 10PM. Others may be 8PM, and some are midnight! Pick the time that works best for you and work backwards. Eventually, your bedtime will likely fall between 6:30PM-7:30PM. 

Your bedtime routine doesn’t need to be a long, drawn out process. If you add too many steps in, you might overcomplicate it and your baby might not be able to piece it all together. What is important is that your routine contains a set of sequential, predictable steps that your baby can identify as signals that it is bedtime. So how long should a bedtime routine be? 30-45 minutes. That’s it! The nice part about a flexible bedtime routine is that you can work backwards from whatever time your baby goes to sleep! 

There are so many elements you can include in a bedtime routine. From bath time, reading, saying goodnight to things around the room, singing songs, putting on fresh pajamas, giving your baby a bottle or nursing, and finally going to sleep. 

There is so much to talk about with bedtime routines from putting your baby down drowsy but awake, how dark the room should be, should you use sound machines, sleep sacks or swaddles, do you use pacifiers etc…we could do full blog posts on each of those subjects! In fact we probably should! 

But to keep this post at a reasonable length, we’ll list some sample bedtime routines below!

Routine 1

6:30PM - Put on fresh diaper & pajamas 

6:35PM - Nurse/Bottle 

6:45PM – Swaddle/Sleep sack 

6:50PM – Sing songs 

6:55PM – Turn on white noise and give pacifier 

7:00PM - Bedtime 

Routine 2

7:30PM – Bath 

7:45PM – Put on fresh diaper & pajamas 

7:50PM – Nurse/Bottle 

8:00PM – Say goodnight to things around the room 

8:10PM – Bedtime 

Routine 3

9:00PM – Baby massage 

9:10PM - Put on fresh diaper & pajamas 

9:15PM – Nurse/Bottle 

9:25PM – Sing to baby 

9:30PM – Bedtime 

Please share with us your bedtime routine in the comments below!