Getting your baby into a good bedtime routine can be a HUGE life-saver. This will ultimately help to keep them on schedule during the day, and prevent having their nights and days confused. In this post I’ll be going over simple bedtime routine tips for baby!
How Much Do Babies Sleep?
A baby’s sleep schedule constantly changes as they grow. When they are fresh out of the oven, they will tend to sleep all day, every day. As the days pass, you’ll notice that your baby will start to stay awake longer between naps.
Eventually they will start dropping naps one by one.
Here is a look at how many hours of sleep your little one should be getting.
*Total hours of sleep is within a 24 hour period.
| Age | Total Hours Sleeping |
| Newborn | 16-17 hours |
| 3 Months | 15-16 hours |
| 6 Months | 15 hours |
| 9 Months | 14 hours |
| 12 Months | 14 hours |
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When to Start a Bedtime Routine
A bedtime routine can usually start up around 2 or 3 months.
When your baby starts to get “predictable” with their sleep and awake patterns, it’s probably a good indication that they are ready for a bedtime routine.
The next step is to set a time that you’d want to begin this sleepy-time ritual!
We initially started WAY later than we probably should have. Our baby’s bedtime routine began around 8:30, and it could be an hour or more before we had her in her crib.
Word of Advice:
Start at an earlier time if you don’t want to be up too late. During sleep regressions, those later hours can be rough if it takes 2 or 3 hours to get your baby to sleep!
Our Baby’s Bedtime Routine
- Start with a bath
- Lather up with some soothing lotion
- Get baby dressed
- Read a bedtime book
- Swaddle, or put on sleep sack
- Turn on white noise machine
- Rock or Feed to sleep
- Slip out of the room like a Ninja
Bedtime Tips
Just to break down our sleep time ritual a little more- these are the steps we go through every night to keep our baby happy and snoozing.
1. Bedtime Bath
Some people will tell you not to give a bath every night. We decided to incorporate a bath into our bedtime routine to let baby know that it is time to wind down.
Using calming wash and lotions such as lavender and chamomile has worked wonders for us.
2. Read a Book
The sound of your voice will help to calm your baby down for the night. Reading before bed has been in our night time routine since day one.
Here are a few of our daughter’s favorite books!
3. Swaddle, Swaddle, Swaddle
Swaddling is amazing! Especially if your baby has a bad startle reflex like ours did. This keeps them nice and cozy and feeling like they are being held close to you.
The zipper swaddles are the way to go too, if your baby allows it! Soo much easier for everyone.
Of course, you will want to ditch the swaddle once your baby starts trying to roll over!
4. Sleep Sacks
Once you are out of the swaddle stage, the next best invention is the sleep sack. We have tried two that have worked wonders for our little one. Both the Nested Bean and the Woolino Sleep Sack are fantastic to keep baby comfy and stay asleep.
5. Turn on the White Noise
White noise machines are another life-saving hack! A white noise machine can mimic the sound inside the womb to help put your little one into a deep sleep, and stay asleep.
They will cancel out any disrupting noises such as the dog barking for no reason- just for an example.
6. Rock That Baby
When babies are teeny-tiny, something as simple as rocking could put them right to sleep. Make sure the room is dark and quiet where you are rocking your mini-me. Light and noise can be very distracting!
We would rock our baby girl once we covered all of the basics above, and let her drift off to dreamland.
7. A Little More Milkies
Really though.. is there anything more powerful than the milkies? That’s a negative. Just a little milk before sleep insures that they won’t be waking up hungry any time soon. (Hopefully at least 5 or 6 hours)
This has always been the icing on the sleepy cake for us. The “last milkies of the day” is the final step in our baby’s bedtime routine. Most of the time she will fall asleep before she can even finish the bottle!
Whatever Works for You
This bedtime routine is what we have done since our little girl was about 5 weeks old. Getting them into a schedule for bedtime makes your life so much easier! It also keeps your little one calm around night time, because they know what to expect.
Any of these tips can be incorporated into baby’s bedtime routine.
Do whatever works for you, and do your best to stick with it!
If you are in the process of developing a bedtime routine for your baby, let me know!!
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