Bed Time??

Hi
I was just wondering if anyone could give me an idea on whats a good bedtime for my 6 month old. Currently he is going to bed at 10:00pm, and waking in between 6 and 8. But when he wakes up before 8am he is still very tired, but he is very hard to get back to sleep. He does not want a bottle or anything he just wakes.
I have read that the earlier the bedtime the better the sleep. Is this true? I was wondering if I should change his bedtime to 9:00pm or is this to early or still to late?
Please help
Mel
xox

Izzy is 5 months and goes to bed at 7. She wake 1-3times a night for a feed and if she gets up before 7 its back to bed, usually wakes at 7-9 ready for the day!! If he is getting long day sleeps then he may not need longer nights? Izzy only has 3-4 one hour sleeps during the day! I think at this age they should be sleeping something like 14 hours all up. HtH!!!

Hi 76stars
Jonathan does not wake during the night which is good. He only wakes early in the morning for no reason lol. Would you be saying 7 is a good bed time? He does not have long sleeps during the day either. only 2-3 half hour to hour naps.

I'd be trying to get him to bed earlier. From about 3 months, Nina started going to bed at 6pm, and at around 12 months extended that to 7pm, which it still is. When she's not ill or teething, she'll sleep through till 7am/7.30am.
When she was 6 months old she was having 2 sleeps, which were both around 2.5 hours each.
HTH

The one problem I have though, is how do I fit his 4 bottles in if I put him to bed so early?

What times are his bottles ATM?

At the moment he has a bottle at 9am, 1pm, 5pm, and then 9pm, and then bed by 10:00pm at the lastest.

my frined .puts her son to bed around 7pm ..

then gently wakes him for him 10pm bottle ...
he sleeps right throught till the morning about 6 or 7am ...

save you having to keep him up and missing out on dh time ...

i'd definitely be trying to get him down earlier, say around 7pm ish... at six months they can have 3-4 bottles per day (according to my type of formula anyway).... if i were you i would get the three bottles in, then let him wake for the fourth, and hopefully it is before you've gone to bed...

my girl is 7 months to give you an example of how we do her bottles:

between 6-7am bottle on waking, solids half an hour later
around 12noon, lunch (solids)
around 1.30pm bottle
around 4.30pm-5pm dinner (solids)
around 7pm bottle then bed, asleep by 8-8.30pm
in between feeds she may also have some toast or a biscuit if she seems hungry or i need a moment of peace.

up until recently i was giving her a fourth bottle at 10pm but then realised she didnt need it and could go through til morning... she does still wake during the night but just needs help to get back to sleep... she isn't actually waking for a feed.

HTH... you might find as he starts to eat more solids, the bottles will drop down, thats what happened for us.

also i just thought i'd add, you might want to try making his bed time earlier gradually.... at about 3-4 months we changed DD's bedtime from 10pm to 7pm and did it in one night, and it took quite a while for things to settle down and for her not to wake at 2am thinking it was time to get up.... just a thought.

I agree with the others, put him to bed earlier, and see when he wakes for a bottle. Like Emma said, it could take a couple of nights of gradually making bedtime earlier before it becomes habit for him.

DS goes to bed anywhere between 8pm and 9pm. I give him his last bottle at about 10:30pm, then he generally sleeps til about 8am.

Thank you everyone for your help.
Emma, thank you, I was also going to add that i was a bit confused on how to give him his solids but you have cleared that up for me taking in to account that Jonathan is 1 month younger but your schedule seems pretty good. I may just try that.
Hopefully as I start increasing the solids he wont need that fourth bottle.
I will put him down at 9 tonight and then gradually cut back the time thank you again. :)

I put my 6mth old DD to bed anywhere between 7-8. She wakes once a night (occaisionally twice) and between 5-6am, and if I'm lucky sometimes 7am. But I think thats because of the sun coming up at 5am now.
With solids, she is still only having one meal per day (breakky), with 5 bottles a day. I am going to increase her solids soon though.
I think putting him down earlier gradually is a good idea, maybe 30mins every few days? Good luck.

We've always put our DS to bed early (around 7pm at 6 months). He is now 19 months old and still has 3 bottles a day with 1 day sleep so you should be able to fit in more bottles easily. Ewans routine is roughly this:

wakes around 6ish - bottle (only half about 100mls)
breakfast at around 7.30 (cereal)
morning tea around 10.30 (eg fruit/rice crackers)
bottle (250ml) at around 11.45
sleep by 12noon till 1.30-2pm
dinner at 5.30ish
bath at 7pm
bottle and bed at 7.30pm
sleeps through to 6ish and then starts all over!!

He used to go to bed earlier (around 7pm) and then have an afternoon sleep too so he would get an extra bottle but when he dropped his afternoon sleep (at about 13 months) he dropped the bottle.

It just kind of worked out that way for us so we stick to it and he likes his routine, it helps him know what to expect for his day and it means he's never too overtired to sleep. He just rolls over closes his eyes and that's that - doesn't cry and carry on.

He was waking for overnight feeds up until 4 months or so ago and we gave him 2 o/n bottles until he was about 8 months old, 1 o/n bottle till he was around 16 months and now he sleeps through.

I know it's hard to know what you are "supposed" to do but we just did what worked for us and our DS and we'll do the same for our little princess when she arrives. We didn't like the idea of control crying so we just waited until Ewan was ready to drop his o/n bottles and knew that when he was ready he'd sleep through and he did. Maybe it took longer than it "should" have but it meant he was never left crying in the dark and bed time was never a battle zone as he knew when he woke one either his Mummy or Daddy would come for him.

He's happy, is a very active little man, sleeps well now so it was worth the wait.