Two month old and bedtime

We're having some issues here with going to sleep. Once Jacob goes down, he's a little angel. But getting him to sleep is another thing...

What do you do in the evenings if Bubs won't sleep? How do you try to get them to sleep? Or does anyone else have a baby that's determined to be up all evening? I'm assuming he needs to go to bed, because in the daytime he never manages more than an hour / hour and a half awake. and he does seem tired... but I could be wrong?? He'd definitely more grizzly than usual, but happy enough when someone's holding him.

At the moment, I try and put him down after he's been awake an hour or so and is starting to look tired, just like I do in the daytime (when it works great). If he cries I wait a moment or so to check he's not just going to stop, and give him a quick feed to calm him down, and try again. And if that doesn't work, I'll get him up, cuddle him a bit (half an hour?), and try again... but it does feel like I'm spending my whole evening battling to get him off to sleep. Should I just give up and keep him up? (I'd rather not, you have to hold him the whole time or he howls)

Edited by Hopes

When my DD was that age we really struggled to get her to sleep before about 9pm. It has a name- the witching hour(s). What worked for us is I put DD in a front pack or a sling so I could get dinner ready etc.

Its quite common for them to be up longer in the evenings. When DD was about 3 months we started having a bedtime routine and she was in bed at 7pm, lights out.

What time are you starting?

I'd love to be putting DS down for the night at 7 like some do, but he's still eating every 2 hours then. So he just has another nap then, and we do a final feed around 9.30pm, then he's in bed for the night.

Our bub was the same. She was in the bassinet in the lounge with us - then one night (maybe about 6-8 weeks) decided to put the bassinet through in the kitchen (dark, quieter but still close enough to us that I didn't feel uncomfortable!!) She then got into a routine of going down at 8:30ish...then it progressively got earlier and earlier...she now (at 4 months) goes down every night at 6pm. She's moved from the kitchen...to going down in our room...and as of last night to her own room.

It helped me to think of those evening sessions as "tanking up" ie - more she fed at night, longer she'd sleep when she went down.

Thanks heaps We don't have a specific 'night-time' routine, although all his wake-ups have a pretty basic routine to them - feed one side / change / feed the other side / play / offer him another quick feed / bed, which works great in the day. I do his bath in the mornings, and don't really want to shift it back (because it's my favourite part of the day, he's so happy and splashy, and the times I've tried doing it at night he just grizzles the whole time).

I've been trying to have him down by 7. That works the odd time, otherwise it varies greatly between then and 1!

Is it dark when you put him down? I'm sure DS settles so much better when it's pitch black. If I'm in the room reading by a lamp he seems to grumble and grunt for much longer than if all the lights are out.

My wee girl took a loong time to adjust her bedtime to a reasonable hour - for the first 3 or 4 months, it was 9 or 10pm... no matter what time we started the bedtime routine and the settling, we'd be in and out, up and down, feed, rock, pat, change etc all evening until the off switch at 10 or so... we would have phases of trying an early time and then get fed up with spending our evenings trying to settle her, so mainly we just followed her lead and enjoyed our evenings more with not trying to put her to bed.