Falling asleep independently - bed time/nap routine

No we don’t do a bath every day (baby has excema). Rough timings but baby goes down at 7pm and wakes up at 6:30am. Naps are around 9, 12 and 4 - all depends on what we’re doing in the day and timings range. To be honest though, I think it’s baby temperament and mine went down independently from very little, I honestly have no idea why/ how as he has always contacted napped, I THINK it’s because he’s always had a dummy so has been able to ‘self soothe’ with that x

Sleeps independently at night, bottle, bath, book bed Naps... needs feed or rock to sleep

No we tend to bath every other day. When he was first learning to fall asleep independently we did it every day but not now. Just so bath some nights, then massage, get dressed, dry hair if bath night, story, sing sleep song, sleep phrase, put him down. Naps put on sleep bag, white noise dark room, sing sleep song, use sleep phrase, put down.

@Sam yeah I worry about his skin with bathing daily but we’ve never tried… he doesn’t have eczema just very sensitive dry skin. He’s never had a dummy so we’ll see - I do think it’s temperament but he’ll need to nap independently when I go back to work so that’s really my only concern/goal.

@Tanya would you say you did the nightly bath for a long time before he got it?

Self soothes to sleep at bedtime (between 7-7.30), wakes a few times in the night, mostly self soothes back to sleep but sometimes does need a tummy pat or head stroke. Bath every other day. Wakes up for first feed around 6am and goes back to sleep around 6.45 until 7.30. Second nap between 10-10.30 for around 40 mins, then afternoon nap around 1.30 again for 40 mins and a cat nap around 4.30. I seem to have a very lazy baby. She was 6 months on Thursday.

Maybe we did a bath every night for a couple of months, something like that but I don't think you have to, just have a consistent routine. Bath is the start of ours so if we miss it it's ok because the rest of the routine is consistent every day. Another idea is bath or top and tail, idea being they associate the water with bedtime rather than specifically a bath.