Bedtime routine..

My baby girl is turning 12 weeks on Wednesday and it’s making me anxious, as the health visitor has told me babies don’t pick up habits until 12 weeks. So now I feel I should be starting a bedtime routine as at the minute she just sleeps downstairs with us until we decide to go to bed, which wakes her up so I feed her then she goes back to sleep in her next to me. This works for us but I feel this unspoken pressure that I should be getting her into a routine. For the last 12 weeks I have been winging it which has worked as she’s a pretty chilled baby but I’m worried if I don’t get into a routine now will I be making my life harder in the long run? I need all the advice I can get please 😅

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I don’t think they need a set routine all day and night. My little boy fell into a routine I tried with him once so we just stuck to it. We first started off with just a night time routine.. it wasn’t a set time to start off with it was just a bath, book and bottle before bed then we introduced a 7pm bedtime and he’s two and half now and still has the same routine minus the bottle xx

Babies don't learn bad habits til around the age of 2 as that is when they really know how to test boundaries and their learning increases tenfold or so I've heard and it is true with my 2 year old. However at 12 weeks they start to learn day and night. Therefore as far as routine goes I would just make sure that day is light and loud, night is dark and quiet. You can bring in the routine of bath, book/song, sleep sack and bottle/feed as the start of setting a routine but it honestly goes with the flow. I've always done book, feed, and bed. Then added in bath, then took out the feed to before bed (once she had teeth so we could brush teeth after milk and before bed) etc. But it has changed here and there when needed. Now that she's two it's more like bath when needed, quiet time, four books with dad, one book with mum, lights out, lie on the floor then asked to be put to bed. It's honestly something that changes as they get older so I wouldn't worry too much. Honestly I just winged it also!! X

We didn't have a proper routine until my LB was around 5 months... he went to bed around 8pm, but then would be up through the night etc. He started sleeping through at around 5 months and then we managed to get into a good routine with everything... we did just wing it, and it just happened 😊

Don’t bother with routine until 5/6 months. I pressured myself to start a routine at 12 weeks and it was awful I was so stressed because he just didn’t want to go to bed when I was trying etc. He naturally fell into a routine at 5 months and it has stayed the same right up till now at 9.5 months the only thing that’s changed is it was 8:30 then it became 8 then 7:30 and now 7 as naps and wake windows adjusted. Don’t stress everything falls into place, 12 weeks is SO early on x

I wouldn't bother yet cos the sleep regression at 4 months messes everything up anyway

I started like you, then I started to put her in her next to me with a camera and I would come back downstairs for a couple of hours, then she was sleeping through the night at about 4 months, so I put her in her own room so we weren't waking each other up. I didn't force any kind of routine, it just happened xx

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