https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Wed, 15 Apr 2026 10:59:47 +0000 https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2825683 Fri, 01 Jun 2018 07:33:51 +0000 JJ2626 2825683@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@SweetiePie: Thank you!! This is all helpful. I went back to work this week so haven’t had time to be on here. Bedtime has been a bit better. But our silly girl almost always poops while she has her last bottle which is why we diaper and swaddle after the bottle! But we’re trying. Will update soon! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2825135 Tue, 29 May 2018 09:14:07 +0000 MaryM 2825135@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>After dealing with LO being sick and having to work back up to eating a normal amount, I'm also dealing with the problem of him not eating enough and sometimes waking for a second "dinner"</p> <p>I was reading about how to help him sleep through the night, and I think I might start slowly making his nighttime bottles smaller (4 oz instead of 5, then maybe down to three) so that he'll wake up more hungry and maybe eat more during the day. Lately he's been having three 5 oz bottles at night (6 p.m., 11 pm, 3 am) and when he wakes up for the day, he'll only have a half bottle. </p> <p>I think when he's eating MOTN...he's not really awake and will be happy with whatever we give him. </p> <p>But in the meantime, we've still been aiming to start getting him ready for bed at 5 or 6 and he's usually out by 7 (unless, like yesterday, he wakes up from a nap at 4 and is exhausted by 6). When he wakes up at 4, we do our best to keep him up a little longer than usual by adding in something soothing like a bath (he has dry skin, so we usually only bathe him once or twice a week...unless he's fussy and we think he'd enjoy it)</p> <p>If he's "short" a bottle, he'll usually wake up to eat again around 9 pm, but in a way it works out for me because DH usually takes the first feeding, so I get to sleep a little longer before I have to get up with him (because then LO will sleep longer before the next bottle) </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2825096 Mon, 28 May 2018 20:03:14 +0000 SweetiePie 2825096@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@JJ2626: Hi! Im sorry not sure how I missed this! To answer your questions:</p> <p>- When my son wakes up earlier than our set "awake" time, I first check his diaper (he is a notorious night/early morning pooper and once he does it, he can't settle back down till he's changed). If he's all clear or after I've changed him, I just shut the door and...don't go back in till 7am :-) I make a judgement call if I turn on the crib soother for him to stare at (since often it will lull him back to sleep). I'm ok with fussing and even some crying as long as its not sustained for more than a couple of mins at a time (eventually I'll just CIO but I'm waiting a couple more weeks for that). Many times he'll surprise me and go back to sleep. But even if he doesn't, he's fine and all smiles when I finally do go in and turn the lights on. And when this happens, remember, their first nap needs to be 1h15min (or whatever your wake period is) from WAKE time, not from when you go in and get him from the crib. So that might mean that I give him a bottle at 7am and he goes right back down because he's been awake since 6am. And that's fine by me. </p> <p>- So as far as time between feeds, the goal is always to stretch them when you feel they are ready to a 4 hour schedule. So unless there is a medical reason (bad reflux, for example, which both of ours might have) I would do 3.5 hours if she seems happy with that. I do 3/3.5 if he had a really crappy feed prior. But if he's sleeping I let him go as long as he wants, up until either a) its been 4 hours since last feed or b) its been 3 hours since he fell asleep, since max sleep interval during the day should be 3 hours.<br /> Bottom line, I think you're doing this part just fine, from what I've read :-) I would not wake to eat every 3 hours unless the doctor says its necessary. 3.5 is a great stretch at this age and if she can do 4 hours between feeds you can...unless you are worried about ounces (like we both are). Honestly I keep going back and forth on this. Part of me thinks every 3 hours might be better for him since all signs are pointing to bad reflux and more feeds could mean more ounces. But then again, since he doesn't seem hungry even at the 4 hour mark sometimes, I wonder how on earth he'll eat every 3 hours??? I'm still experimenting and its a work in process. </p> <p>- keep me posted on how shortening her awake time works for you :-) </p> <p>- I'm confused on your last point here:<br /> "One issue (that I know you have too) is that she takes so long to eat that it's impossible to have her awake for just 30-45 minutes except MOTN so doing it before bedtime won't work that well for us. Even if she eats at her best, for her it's 20 mins for the bottle plus we hold her upright for 20 plus have to change diaper, swaddle, etc. Ugh! But we'll aim for as quick as possible."<br /> I'm not sure what you're saying the problem is? You're saying because feeds take so long its hard to let her be awake for a shorter period of time? Here's how ours goes.<br /> -Wake from nap<br /> -Feed right away<br /> -If short/quick feed 30 mins or less we let him remain upright while playing in bouncy seat or rock n play for 15-20 mins, then right at the 1 hour since awake mark we take him back, change him, sleep sack, down in crib, bye.<br /> -If long feed and we are nearing the next nap, I take him back to his room, change and sleep sack and THEN finish feed in his dark room with sound machine. Then I hold him upright on my shoulder/burping for the 15-20 mins, then put him down and leave. </p> <p>The other thing that jumps out at me is that for bedtime you are feeding and holding upright THEN changing and swaddling? That definitely is making it harder than it needs to be. We do this:<br /> -Bath<br /> -Night diaper (get pampers baby dry!)<br /> -Lotion<br /> -Jammies<br /> -Sleep sack/swaddle<br /> -Lights off and sound machine<br /> -Feed<br /> -Hold upright/burp<br /> -Down for the night</p> <p>OR you could:<br /> -Bath<br /> -Diaper<br /> -Lotion<br /> -Jammies<br /> -Lights off and sound machine<br /> -HALF bottle<br /> -Change diaper<br /> -Swaddle/sleep sack<br /> -Finish bottle<br /> -Hold upright/burp<br /> -Down for the night</p> <p>In either scenario above, you should be doing the bath an hour before bedtime should be. So, 6pm for a 7pm bedtime.<br /> This might mean she naps until 5:45/6, gets right into bath and goes into the routine and back down at 7pm only an hour later - and that's OK! You might actually find she does a lot better that way because she's well rested and not cranky for bedtime. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2824993 Sat, 26 May 2018 20:43:11 +0000 JJ2626 2824993@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@periwinklebee: Thank you! That's great to hear about the swaddling. I think we'll try again next week maybe. And interesting about the catnap-my husband is trying to get her down right now at 6:15 and I have no idea if that is going to be bedtime or catnap. Ugh!</p> <p>@SweetiePie: Thank you so much!! This is all helpful. A few questions:<br /> -So, we don't need her up at any particular time because we'll have a nanny but I'd be okay to wake her at 7am if that would be helpful for bedtime. But today she woke up at 6 and was so wide awake I don't think I could have put her off until 7. What do we do in that situation?<br /> -The feeding is every 3 hours unless she takes such a long nap that it's 3.5. We try not to do less than 3 hours unless she took a super short nap and will be awake too long. Should we be waking her up from naps to stick to 3 hours? That doesn't sound ideal! We could probably stretch her to 3.5 hours all day but then I'm back to worrying she's not eating enough.<br /> -I think you're right we may be keeping her up too long even though I try to read her cues. We'll try to put her down sooner and maybe that will help with the bouncing. We are willing and planning to sleep train but not until she's 4 months so I know that we may not get her to bed awake until that point.<br /> -One issue (that I know you have too) is that she takes so long to eat that it's impossible to have her awake for just 30-45 minutes except MOTN so doing it before bedtime won't work that well for us. Even if she eats at her best, for her it's 20 mins for the bottle plus we hold her upright for 20 plus have to change diaper, swaddle, etc. Ugh! But we'll aim for as quick as possible.</p> <p>Thank you again!</p> <p>Also, unrelated but I was with a friend today who has a 5 month old who also takes forever to eat and sometimes just refuses to take his bottle or spits it out. But is healthy and growing and happy. So maybe his is more normal than we think? </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2824954 Sat, 26 May 2018 07:35:32 +0000 SweetiePie 2824954@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Ok, I'm going to try to cover everything and I'm sure I'll be long winded but I'll try not to be. </p> <p>I agree with a lot of what @periwinklebee: said above. </p> <p>1) If you start feeding at the same time each AM and PM (12 hours apart) you will begin to see a more predictable schedule/routine fall into place.<br /> So for example, if you know that you'll be going back to work (making this up for argument sake) and she will have to be up for the day at 6:30am, eating at 6:45am, that should be the time you aim for every day. What this means is...if she wakes before 6:30am, you treat it like a night waking. Even if its 6:15am. You can let her fuss. You can go in and do a little shush/pat with all the lights off. Whatever it is that you plan to do for night time wakings (besides feed).<br /> THEN at 6:30am you go in and make a big distinction between night and day. So the OPPOSITE of what you do for night wakings. Turn on the light, cheerily say "Good morning ______", sing a song, open blinds, etc. You want to set her clock to always be ready to go/expecting 6:30am wakeup. Have the bottle ready (if bottle feeding) so that as soon as you change her and play a little on the changing table, you can take her and feed her at 6:45. Its really important to not go in and make it "morning" before 6:30am.<br /> If she's still asleep you can wake her gently. So you still want to do the cheery morning stuff but maybe build up to it. Turn on a lamp and rub her awake while softly saying "good morning, its time to wake up!" and as she wakes up and smiles you can then become more and more animated. This is to make sure she's not woken too suddenly and pissed off. NOTE: I also make a judgement call on if I let my 3mo "sleep in". I SAH, so I don't have to have him anywhere at a certain time. So if he had a rough night or his last night waking was on the later side (4:30am for example) I will let him sleep maybe an extra half hour or so. </p> <p>2) Try to feed on a consistent schedule. You said every 3-3.5 hours, so I'm not sure if you're feeding on demand and that's what it works out to be? But I would pick a goal of time that works best and try to stick with it, except for extreme circumstances (I know you saw my feeding thread, oy.) So I try really hard to stick to a 4 hour schedule, but I do give in and do 3 hours if the previous feed was terrible. But I do try to have goals/times to make it to. That way I can try to visualize how the rest of the day will go. And if I do get off of schedule for feeding, I can try to readjust and make up for it later on. Today depending how naps go I might try a 3 hour schedule and see how it shakes out. </p> <p>3) Pay attention to sleepy cues and put her down AS SOON AS you see them. Yawning and fussing are too late. Sleepy signals are them getting quiet and less playful, turning away from your eye contact, glazing over/staring off into space. If those are hard to identify, what you can do is start to take note of how long she's been awake when she starts yawning/fussing. If you see that its consistently at the 1.5 hour mark, you want to start putting her down SOONER than that, BEFORE the yawning and fussing. So experiment with putting her down at the 1h10min mark. Remember, you want them to be ASLEEP at their ideal time, so you have to take them back to change, swaddle/sleep sack, etc well before the time they should be back asleep. So lets say that after a couple of days of monitoring this, you realize her ideal time to fall asleep is 1h15min after she last woke (NOT after you took her from the crib/bassinet, but from when you saw that she woke up). You want to take her back to start "nap" routine at the 1h mark (depending on how long it takes you to get her down aside from rocking and bouncing - like to change a diaper, turn off lights, turn on sound machine, swaddle, rock for a minute and set down). So that when you put her down she hasn't passed the ideal drowsy period.<br /> This should help with some of the rocking to sleep and bouncing you have to do so much of. IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME AND COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY. If she is now really accustomed to being rocked and held for sleep, you will need to be very black and white on this. If you want to not rock/bounce you should look at some sleep training methods, decide what sounds best for you/LO and stick to it like glue. </p> <p>3) As you begin to see a pattern emerge from waking at same time and feeding at about the same intervals, you'll be able to predict bedtime. If you wake at 6:30, bedtime should be 6:30pm. If you wake at 7am, bedtime should be 7pm. It MIGHT fluctuate a little though. Bedtime is al little harder to have a specific time for at this age because of the naps. But you can most definitely have a target.<br /> I again agree with @periwinklebee: that my 3mo doesn't need a lot of wake time between last nap and bedtime. For example, if he wakes at 5:30 from his last nap, I could easily get him up, let him play for like 15 mins, give a bath, feed around 6:15 and he'll be down like 7pm. But, he's usually sleep-eating so hard to say when he's actually considered "asleep".<br /> VERY IMPORTANT to have a bedtime routine and to stick to it. It should be very relaxing. Ours is:<br /> -Bath with lullaby music<br /> -Cuddles in the glider while I dry him<br /> -Night Diaper<br /> -Lotion<br /> -PJs<br /> -Close door<br /> -Turn off lights<br /> -Turn on sound machine<br /> -Bottle<br /> -Burp/hold upright for 15 mins or so<br /> -Lay him down (he's usually asleep at this point, its the only sleep of the day that I don't mind if he falls asleep on me, because that's just what happens when they eat and they're tired :-) </p> <p>You want each step of the process to signal "its time to sleep". So a tickle fest right before you feed might not be a good idea (as an example). </p> <p>All that being said, here's an example of our day using my sons own max wake times and my "goal" of 4 hour feeds. You'll see some feeds are at the 3/3.5 hour mark but by the end of the day I am able to slowly stretch it back to a 4 hour window:</p> <p>6:45am - go in and start the day<br /> 7am - bottle (HARDEST bottle of the day for us, ugh)<br /> 7:30am - down for first nap (YES that sounds insane, but he's usually awake between 6/6:30 so even though I only got him at 6:45, he needs to go down pretty soon after. Morning nap is MOST IMPORTANT NAP of the day! Its considered to be a continuation of their night sleep. It is the most restorative).<br /> 10am - Awake from nap, play a little<br /> 10:30am - Feed<br /> 11:15am - Down for nap (like in crib and I'm walking out of the room)<br /> 1:30pm - Awake from nap, play a little<br /> 2pm - feed<br /> 2:45pm - Down for nap<br /> 5pm - Awake from nap, play a little<br /> 5:30pm - bath, rest of routine<br /> 6pm - Feed<br /> 6:30/45/7pm (since he's so slow) - Down in crib</p> <p>I know its a lot but feel free to ask me anything. I'll answer when I can! Will be running around with family this weekend. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2824940 Fri, 25 May 2018 21:40:59 +0000 periwinklebee 2824940@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Do you wake up at the same time every day, and do the first feed at the same time? Once we instituted this, we fell naturally into a bedtime at the same time every night as well. The transition to this more regular schedule happened right around the 3 month mark. </p> <p>Re the swaddle, we tried dropping it at 3 months and it was a disaster, but when we tried again in a few weeks, no problem. So if your LO isn't quite ready, she may be quite soon. </p> <p>My LO usually takes a catnap (like 30 min) around 6 or so, and we don't have a problem getting him down at 7:30. I don't know if this is the exception, but in fact I think he goes down easier when he has the catnap because then he is less overtired. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2824939 Fri, 25 May 2018 21:13:50 +0000 SweetiePie 2824939@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Duplicate post </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2824938 Fri, 25 May 2018 21:13:10 +0000 SweetiePie 2824938@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Hi! I’m about to go to sleep myself because my guy will also wake sometime between 1-3pm :-)<br /> But I’ll reply tomorrow when I’m at a computer because I want to address all of your questions and concerns in detail. </p> <p>Bottom line, yes you can do it. No you can’t schedule naps yet. But you can get on a somewhat predicable routine. Bedtime might happen somewhere in a 1 hour window, but it’s possible! More tomorrow! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-to-give-my-3-month-old-a-bedtime#post-2824933 Fri, 25 May 2018 21:06:40 +0000 JJ2626 2824933@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>So, I added to another post about this but am starting my own because I feel like I need real help. Here's our situation, as concisely as possible:<br /> -3 month old not on any kind of schedule during the day other than eats every 3-3.5 hours and is only wake for 1.5 hours.<br /> -She does not fall asleep on her own. Needs to be bounced and shushed to sleep but only takes like 5-10 mins (except MOTN just falls asleep). She doesn't really get drowsy,--she goes from playing to irritable and then we bounce her to sleep.<br /> -She is still swaddled and I think she needs it but she is working on rolling and does move around in her bassinet a lot so we probably need to drop it soon.<br /> -Sleeps well at night right now-usually only 1 wakeup anywhere between 1am and 4am before up for the day between 6 and 7. </p> <p>The issue is bedtime--she doesn't have one and won't stick to one. Because she isn't on a nap schedule, I never know when her last nap will be. I talked to a friend who does sleep coaching who said to wake her from her last nap at 5:30 to get her down at 7. But when we do that, she sometimes falls asleep for just 20 minutes and then wants to eat again. So then she isn't down until 8:30/9. This is really hard because we are spending 5:30-9 feeding her and getting her to sleep and we have no down time at all. I used to think that if she went down earlier it would be worse because then 6 hours would mean she's up at midnight but one time she went down at 6:30 and slept until 3. So my question is how do I institute a consistent bedtime? Do I need to start scheduling naps so that bedtime is the same every night? The sleep coach said it is too early to schedule naps but I'm a bit skeptical. Or maybe she is just not quite ready for an early and consistent bedtime and I need to be patient. But @sweetiepie, you seem to swear by an early bedtime. :happy: Sorry this is so long but would love any and all ideas. Thank you!!</p> <p>ETA: Also, she doesn't always eat enough (I think) during the day and I feel like she needs to stock up with an extra feed before bed, but if we put her down at 6:30, she'll miss that. </p>