Community Questions - Baby bedtime routine?

"My daughter is just 3 months and we are wanting to start getting her into some kind of bedtime routine. Is there a routine you followed and would suggest? Or any tips on how to start with a bedtime routine?"

Every baby is different and so their routines will likely differentiate too. However, we did start to implement a loose bedtime routine when our little ones were 3 months old too, to help their own circadian rhythm - we also found that 3 months was when we could start to see a little more predictability with their naps and morning wake ups. We also found that making sure we got outside with our babies every day into natural light really helped with their naps and their nighttime sleep too - just something to note!

In terms of a bedtime routine, the most important thing is to try make sure you do the same thing every night for consistency in order to implement the routine. Something that we were conscious of before starting to introduce our bedtime routine was babies wake window before bed time. As a general rule of thumb, and this can absolutely vary from baby to baby, but by 3 months with our babies, we aimed for the wake window before bedtime to be between 90-120 minutes to make sure our little ones don't get overtired before bed and are also tired enough to fall asleep when they head to bed! Generally, we aim for a bedtime between 7-8pm, (and still do for our toddlers!), but for when baby was 3 months, we tried to ensure that the last nap of the day was done by 5.45pm at the latest as often as we could.

For the pre-bed routine, we kept it as simple as we could and it looked something like this -

- Bath (every other night)

- PJ's / nappy

- Bottle & Burp

- Sleepsuit

- White Noise Machine

- Bed