Nighttime Routine

Can anyone tell me what their nighttime routine is?
Our boys are 4 months, we have been consistant with bringing them to their room giving them their bottles with the lights dim, swaddled, and the white noise on. Lately one refuses his bottle (he wants to nurse) and wants to fall asleep in your arms. A month ago it seemed easier...one person could handle bedtime... but not lately. We DREAD bedtime. It is a fight everynight. It used to take 30mins at the most from start of bottles to babies in their cribs. Lately it takes over an hour.
I am willing to nurse them before bed...I only give the bottle to maintain their ability to take a bottle from others.
What is everyone else doing?

 

at 4 months we did baths, pjs, nurse in the living room, swaddle, white noise, cuddle & song, then into bed. i think it was around 5 months we added some reading in after nursing. it took us about an hour from start to finish & we usually did it together, however i did the same routine by myself for their naptime (minus the bath & nursing).

 

At 4 months we actually ditched the swaddles. It seemed extreme at the time but immediately we noticed a difference because right about that time our kids found their comfortable sleeping positions. DS likes to sleep on his side and suck his thumb and DD is a stomach sleeper (she could flip really well at this point). So the swaddles were actually holding them back.
DS used to scream horribly before we put him to bed and it was really tough to get him to sleep but now he goes down immediately. We also do bottle, (sometimes bath), change to feet-y pajamas, white noise and then bed. Our other rule is pacifiers at bed time--not sure how you feel about this--and they get the binkie replaced 3 times within the first 30 minutes of bed time. This has worked miracles for us because the babies are asleep literally within 10 minutes of going down. It's really great. We rarely have to replace the binkies more than once.
I hope this is helpful--we found that at 4 months, it was time to lay down the law, mostly because we were both back to work and needed *some* sleep!

 

At that age we did a nappy change and pjs, then off to the bedroom with dimmed lights for nursing and cuddling, then we turned the lights off, laid them into their sleeping bags and into their crib, patted them a bit and I sang lullabies to them till they went to sleep. This last stage could last anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes. We never had tears or fights when putting them to bed, that came later for us.

 

We were still rocking our boys to sleep at that age - so there were usually 2 of us to put them to bed. We did a low-key activity (stroller walk usually), baths, pjs, bottles. If they didn't fall asleep at the bottle, we would read to them or sing, or low-key play until they got tired (rubbing eyes, yawning, or dazing), then rock to sleep and put down. We got out of rocking at 5 months, but still didn't put down until they were drowsy.

We didn't enforce a real bedtime range until they were older - if they weren't tired, there was no point for us to try to put them to bed. But, we always did baths and etc around the same time so that they would start to get used to it. By 7 months old, they started to go to bed around the same timeframe (7-8pm).

 

Our boys are only 3 months but a routine is starting to emerge.
We do feeding, bath (only 3 nights a week), massage with lotion, pajamas, rock for 5 min then bed. They often wake up or fuss within the first hour or so of going down. We check and console and try not to pick them up unless they are really upset, but we soothe until they are quiet and calm again and then leave the room.