From babygrows to big-kid pyjamas, the routine tweaks that cut our bedtime from 90 minutes to 40.
For about six months, bedtime in our house took an hour and a half. Every single night.
It would start at half six with good intentions and a warm bath. By seven, the baby was wailing on the changing mat, my five-year-old was running laps of the landing with no pjs on, and I was trying to find a clean sleepsuit in the dark while my husband read the same dinosaur book for the fourth time. By eight, we were all exhausted, and I would come downstairs to a cold cup of tea and a pile of washing I did not have the energy to face.
Something had to change. It turned out it was not one big thing but lots of small ones, and most of them happened before anyone got into bed.
Getting the order right
The first thing I did was write down what we were doing, in order. Seeing it on paper was eye-opening. We were doing bath, then milk, then pyjamas, then teeth, then stories, then more milk, then back into the bathroom because someone needed a wee. The baby was getting overtired while we waited for the big one, and the big one was getting wound up because she had to wait for the baby.
We switched to this:
- Dinner at half five
- Bath for both at quarter past six
- Straight into nightclothes in the warm bathroom
- Milk for the baby, teeth for the big one
- Baby into bed first
- Two stories for the big one
- Lights out
Nothing revolutionary. But doing it in the same order every night meant everyone knew what came next, including me.
Getting dressed in the bathroom
This one tweak saved us about fifteen minutes a night. I used to carry a damp, cross baby from the bath to the nursery to get dressed, by which point she had cooled down and was furious about it.
Now I lay everything out on a towel on the bathroom floor before the bath goes on: nappy, cream, sleeping bag and nightclothes for both children. The heated towel rail keeps everything toasty, and nobody gets cold on the walk down the landing.
Choosing nightclothes that don’t start a fight
I underestimated how much the clothes themselves were slowing us down.
For the baby, a zip-up babygrow made a real difference. I had been using ones with poppers all the way down the legs, and every night was the same fumbling battle to line them up while she kicked. A two-way zip means I can do a nappy change at 2am without undressing her entirely, and nobody’s poppers end up in the wrong holes. We also stopped buying newborn sizes altogether and moved straight to 3 to 6 months, which gave us more wear out of each one.
For my five-year-old, getting dressed had become a nightly negotiation. The buttons were too fiddly, the waistband was too scratchy, the collar was “too tickly.” Swapping to soft two-piece kids pyjamas with a stretchy fold-over waistband and a wide neckline meant she could put them on herself, which she loved. A friend recommended Love to Dream after her son stopped complaining about scratchy seams, and the soft bamboo-based fabric has gone down well in our house too. Being able to say “you get your pyjamas on while I do your sister’s nappy” has bought me back precious minutes.
Letting her choose which pair to wear from two options helped too. Enough choice to feel in charge, not so much that she spends ten minutes deliberating.
Winding down the room
Our house is not big, and the landing light used to blaze straight into both bedrooms. A few small changes to the rooms themselves made a difference:
- Dimming the lights from bath time onwards, so the whole upstairs starts to feel sleepy.
- Blackout blinds for summer, when it is still broad daylight at eight o’clock and my five-year-old wants to know why she has to go to bed “in the daytime.”
- A room thermometer in each bedroom, so I can pick the right sleeping bag tog for the baby and the right weight of pyjamas for her sister without guessing.
- Quiet background sound, which masks the noise of the telly downstairs and next door’s dog.
Doing the prep before dinner
The last change was the least glamorous and possibly the most useful. I stopped leaving bedtime prep until bedtime.
While the pasta is on, I now spend five minutes upstairs: bath toys in the tub, towels on the rail, the baby’s sleeping bag unzipped and open in the cot, tomorrow’s clothes on the chair and a spare set of nightclothes folded on top of the drawers in case of a leak at midnight. I also fill the water beaker for my eldest, because “I’m thirsty” was reliably good for another ten minutes of stalling.
It sounds almost too simple to matter. But every job I do at half five is one I am not doing at seven with a baby on my hip and a preschooler hanging off my leg. By the time the bath is running, everything we need is already in the room, and the whole routine becomes a matter of working through the list.
What didn’t work
In the spirit of honesty, a few things we tried and quickly abandoned:
- Bedtime apps and screens. Even “calming” ones seemed to wind my eldest up.
- Bath every single night for the baby. We moved to every other night, with a quick top and tail in between, and nobody’s skin minded.
- Me doing everything on my own while my husband washed up. We now split it, one child each, and swap every few nights.
Where we are now
Most nights, bedtime now takes about forty minutes from bath to lights out. It is not perfect. There are still nights when someone needs three wees, the baby is teething, or the big one decides she is scared of the dressing gown on the back of the door.
But the evenings feel calmer. I come downstairs while my tea is still hot. And on the nights when it all falls apart, I remind myself that tomorrow is another bath time, and we get to start again.
