5. Put baby to bed the same time as you

We have always put our babies to bed at the same time as we go to bed, usually 10 or 11 p.m. We get ourselves ready for bed and then go through the baby's night time routine, so by the time she is finally placed in her crib we are also ready to head straight into bed and turn out the lights.

There are a few reasons why we do this. Firstly, we have always wanted to have our babies in our room, for their own comfort and security, so we can get to them quickly when they need us, and also for simple convenience. However, I have already noted how important I feel it is to not disturb the baby during the night time sleep, and so if we went to bed later than the baby there would always be the risk of waking her with sounds, light etc.

Secondly, in our experience, babies usually have a longer stretch of night sleep, followed by a feed, and then a shorter stretch. We have always seen little point in being awake while the baby is enjoying the first round of night sleep. We might as well make the most of baby's sleep time by making sure we are resting ourselves. If, for example, you put your baby to bed at 7pm, and she sleeps for 6 hours, wakes for a quick feed and goes down for 4 hours more, if you don't go to bed until 11pm, then you only have 3 hours of sleep before the baby wakes! Whereas if you both go to bed at 11pm, then you will enjoy all the sleep that baby will allow!

Thirdly, have you ever been in a room full of sleepy people, and then suddenly felt as if you have been hit by the sleep bug yourself? It sounds strange, but I sometimes wonder if baby is more inclined to go to sleep and stay asleep if they are in a room with other sleeping people.

Once baby is sleeping well through the night, then you can always bring her 'going to bed' time forward gradually every night, by about 15 minutes or so, until it is set at a time that you feel might be appropriate to maintain from then on. In our experience, this doesn't impact on a firmly established routine/pattern. Likewise, if you want to make your baby's 'going to bed time' later, it is best to do it gradually in the same way. If you suddenly try to make it later by a longer time, then it is likely that the baby will wake up at her usual time, and so enjoy a shorter amount of sleep and be irritable because of that.