Does your baby need a bedtime routine for healthy sleep?

Baby bedtime routines

For many families, trying to put a bedtime routine in place makes baby's sleep worse, not better.

You might have heard that it's best to have a clearly defined bedtime routine which you stick to, step by step, night after night, so that your baby learns healthy sleep habits. This perspective arises out of the sleep training approaches, which wrongly believe sleep to be under the control of sleep associations. If a bedtime routine is working for your family then you don't need to change anything.

But the latest sleep science tells us that sleep is under the control of the two biological sleep regulators, the body clock and sleep pressure only, not associations or routines.

Although sleep associations don't help babies sleep, babies do learn very quickly. Some babies learn to dial up in response to bedtime routines, because they know that they are now going into a time of low sensory stimulation. Paradoxically, bedtime routines can get in the way of easy, enjoyable bedtimes.

Here are problems which can be caused by advice to create and stick with bedtime routines.

• Efforts to avoid 'overstimulation' in preparation for bedtime dial babies up, because of their powerful biological need for rich and changing sensory stimulation (a need which only increases as sleep pressure rises). When your baby is dialled up, the sleep pressure can't easily do it's job of sending your baby off to sleep.

• Dimming lights in preparation for bedtime doesn't bring on sleep (despite what you might have heard about melatonin). However, your baby may learn that when you dim the lights, she is facing a time of low sensory stimulation, which dials her up. Dimming the lights can dial everyone up even though as parents you might be trying to project calm, because it narrows attention onto sleep, making evenings miserable.

• Similarly, because your baby learns very quickly, she may developed a conditioned dialling up when you

  • Put her into a sleep suit or dress her for bed

  • Put her into the cot

  • Clean her teeth (if she has teeth)

  • Go into the bedroom.

It's quite common for parents to begin dreading the evenings and the commencement of the bedtime routine. It's all so miserable! Depressing, even, night after night. This anticipation of misery is a kind of conditioned dialling up in ourselves. Yet we can side-step this all together, by not trying to have bedtime routines.

Baby bedtime rituals

I've heard myself say many times to parents over the years that "breastfeeding to sleep is your Ultimate Bedtime Ritual - the only one you need!" If your baby isn't breastfed, then a bottle feed to sleep does the same. It's just important you don't feel you have to burp your baby or hold her upright after the feed.

There are many ordinary activities which need to be repeated throughout our daily lives. As parents, you may draw comfort yourselves from certain daily rituals. Bedtime rituals do emerge in family life, and can be a source of enjoyment and satisfaction.

The key here with our babies is to hold these rituals very lightly, with a focus on enjoyment. If you deliberately cultivate flexibility in the way your little ones go to sleep, your family will be able to enjoy socially engaged evenings outside the home, and as parents you won't feel hemmed in by your little peoples' sleep needs.

Also, if there's one thing you can be sure of, your baby's sleep needs will vary over time, sometimes from day to day, or week to week. If you focus on enjoyment and flexibility, working with the two sleep regulators but living the most satisfying life you can, including in the evenings, you will be able to create a healthy, no-fuss relationship with your little one's sleep, right throughout their childhood. You can find out more here.

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Evening play (often noisy and excited!) and other sensory adventures help with baby's sleep

Breastfeeding your baby to sleep doesn't cause bad habits