How to get her to sleep when we are out?

[mindy76]

Have had my 6 month old daughter on the EASY routine now for about 1 week. Works a treat and she went through the night on the 3rd night of PU/PD. So pleased. Anyway, my question is, how can we go out, and still keep her on the EASY schedule, in the evening.
Is is ok just to let her sleep in the pram, without bath etc as we usually do for our night routine. And if she wakes, shall I do PU/PD as usual as if we were at home. Maybe a silly question...

[franchick]

Hi Mindy

I am probably not the best person to give advice as we gave up on pu/pd the second time round after illness (just us being lazy, not our LO!), but it did work the first time we did it.

Anyway, what we ended up doing when our LO was your LO's age was just put them down wherever we were out and then transfer her into the car and put her to bed when we got home in the usual way (we put her in her pj's when we were out). Many times she never woke up at all.

I think that letting her fall asleep in her pram from time to time will not spoil what you are doing as long as you remain consistent at all other times.

Nowadays (LO is 20 months old), if we are out in the evening, we don't have a chance of getting her to go to sleep if we will be going home, as everything is just too exciting for her, so what we do now is arrive and leave earlier than we might have done otherwise, and get her ready for bed before going in the car, so that we can just put her to bed when we get home. If it is something really important, we let her nap for as long as possible in the afternoon and just keep her up at the outing till she can handle it (say, 9 or 9.30pm at the latest), then get her routine back on track the next day - easier to achieve with an older one, though, I think!

[mindy76]

Ok great! Thanks for that. Just what I wanted to know.

[Stace]

Hay Mindy,

My LO is now 15 months and I have to say that we hardly went out until he was 12 months, instead we had people to us for dinner etc, got family to baby sit at our home or stayed over in a hotel and got a sitter in the room for any big doos (we got married when he was 5 months old and he was still in bed for 19:00).

The 12 months have gone SO fast and our DS is so settled now as a result. He's a fantastic napper - 2 hours each afternoon and sleeps 13 hours most nights. We've had teething probs which have upset him at night but apart from that he's pretty consistant 19:30 to 08:30.

My advice would be, to stick to your LO's routine as much as possible as it will be worth while long term. As Franchic said an odd night here and there is not a major problem you may just find that they're a little out of sorts for the following few nights. You need to give the routine time to become a routine too or your baby will get confussed.

Sorry if it's not what you'd like to hear but that's my honest advice and what I'll be doing again when no 2 arrives in July.

Honestly, the hard work now will be SOOOOOO worth it long term 

Good luck x

[mindy76]

Yes, I totally understand. It was more just for the odd night here and there. I agree that the routine should be totally settled before starting to "upset" it.
Thanks again for your replies.