Good sleepers: What does your routine look like?
mamarunner
member
Hoping I can get some advice from those of you who have good sleepers. We are by no means on any sort of schedule at this point, however, my LO naturally follows the eat, play, sleep routine. We go to bed pretty late (between 10-midnight depending on her last feeding) and usually she'll wake somewhere between 5am-6:30am with a 7.5 hour stretch being her longest. So, I'd like to start putting our LO down for the night earlier with a more structured bedtime routine (bath, pjs, bottle), but how do you do that if LO is used to eating as soon as she wakes up? If LO eats at 7:30pm she'll usually "nap" from 9-10:30pm, we'll wake her, change her diaper, swaddle, bottle, and immediately put her to bed with no fuss. Do you force your LO to stay awake in the evening between feedings?
Re: Good sleepers: What does your routine look like?
Why do you wake her at 10:30? You should just feed her at 9 and put her to bed for the night.
DS has 2 feedings during his last awake time. One when he gets up from his last nap, and one at 7 before he goes to bed. Sometimes those last two feedings are only one hour apart depending on when he wakes up from his early evening nap.
exactly this
This for us too. Well I used to have a good sleeper LOL. Anyways, he will eat when he wakes from his last nap, say at 6:30, then at bed time, say at 8pm. I think you could easily do a dream feed at 9 or 10 oclock, since you are putting her right back to bed anyways, have you tried doing it without actually waking her from this" nap"?
Yeah..don't wake the sleeping baby.
I'm convinced that doing that unless you have to leads to sleep problems.
Our routine is simple. Jammies, wipe down/bath, bottle, rock until asleep/almost asleep, bed. Easy peasy!
my guy didnt get better at sleeping until 3,5 onths old. and then at 4 months old he relapsed back to waking at night, but is now (at 5mo) back to sleeping well. our routine:
Nurses around 5 or 6pm then he plays and watches me do house work or eat dinner...then nurse again 2 hours after he started eating last time (so 7 or 8pm). Then we do his baby food and cereal. Then he watches me get his bath ready, then our bath routine is the same its been since his umbilical stump fell off. He loves his bath, so he can be crying then as soon as he gets in the tub he relaxes. Then lotion and kisses, pjs and get into his sleep sack (he hated being swaddled). Then I nurse him to sleep in my bedroom no tv and no lights. while he nurses, i have a heating pad in a pillow case warming the mattress in his crib (this is the only thing that got him sleeping in his crib!). he falls asleep in 20-40 mins and then i put him down asleep...i turn on his humidifier and 45mins of rain sounds on his whit noise machine...he goes all night! good luck!!
ps i am slowly moving bedtime up. it gets messed up with my husband's work schedule!
My little guy would only sleep on me for the first 3 months; we tried the Miracle Blanket and it was GREAT. Once he started rolling over from back to belly we took him out of the Miracle blanket, but he was sleeping for about 6 hours or so in it. Once we couldn't use the blanket anymore I just started laying him in his crib asleep/partially asleep, with his sleep sheep on, and if he woke up I would pat his belly, tell him I'm there, and leave him for 5 minutes. If he was still crying/fussing, I'd do the same thing, but leave for 10 minutes. He normally passes out halfway through the 2nd time
He's sleeping 12 hours a night now, at 5 months. I didn't think this method would work, since we had tried it before and he just screamed, but it's been great. Give it time, he now just falls asleep on his own in the crib and if he wakes up he puts himself back to sleep.
Good luck! Hopefully something works- I understand your frustration!