April 2011 Moms
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Bedtime routines
I am trying to set up a bedtime routine for LO. Starts with a bath around 8 and then bedtime lotion and jammies followed by boobie time. The last two nights, she is sleeping and I wake her for her bath. Is this something you do? If I didn't wake her up I would be up for stretches through the night.
I want to sleep more then 2 hour stretches and this isn't happening yet. She was sleeping 4 to 5 hours the 1st two weeks in bed with me and we now have her in the crib as I don't want her in bed with us.
Any ideas would be great!
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Re: Bedtime routines
We have a very similar bed time routine. Bath, lotion, pajamas, boob/book (I read to him while he nurses). We do this in his room, with only one dim light on and his Sleep Sheep playing. It seems to work well. As far as timing, I'm still letting him tell us when he's ready. We do this routine anywhere from 7 pm to 10 pm. I wait until he seems "ready" - yawning, etc. If he's napping at 7 or 8, I don't wake him up to do a bath. I wait until he wakes up and then we start the routine.
Yesterday he napped from 5-9 with one quick nursing session at 7. We did the bedtime routine and put him down again at 10. He slept until 2:30, ate, and went right back down until 6. The night before he didn't nap well during the day and was up much more often. So for us it is true that daytime sleep begets night time sleep. He seems to sleep less soundly when we wake him.
starting a routine is a great start! She is probably going through a growth spurt, hence the 2 hours in between. Hopefully this is the case, because it wont continue.
Are you swaddling, too? This seems to help a great deal with them not waking themselves up. Do you have something like a sleep sheep, or white noise machine? We use this everytime LO wakes up during the night to get him back to sleep.
We don't do a bath every night because I swear it just wakes him up. It's like he's thinking, "Bath time? Yay! I love baths! Now let's play!"
As for a routine, we do what everyone else mentioned. We put him in footie jammies and feed him in his room (not downstairs in the living room like during the day). I also swaddle him in a super-tight SwaddleMe (we just using Aden and Anais blankets during the day). We turn on his white noise machine before we start nursing.
One recommendation is to be sure she's REALLY actually full from her nursing. At night, my son tends to cluster feed and / or get distracted while eating. As a result, sometimes he pretends to be done eating before he's really full. It can take a couple of nursing attempts to actually get him full enough so he'll actually fall asleep.
I agree! Make sure she has nutritive sucking. If not, wake her up and get her to really eat. If she's falling asleep early, or just lightly sucking, she's not taking in milk and not getting full enough to hold her out longer than 2 hours.
Routines really are great, and kids LOVE routines. You could try adding in a walk after dinner. I did this with DS1 and it was a great part of our routine, not to mention it helped with me shedding some of those baby pounds.