Parenting after a Loss
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What is your bedtime routine?
There are some nights where after DD's last feeding, she will fall asleep while nursing and then go right down and doesn't make a peep. There are other nights when she will fall asleep while nursing and then I put her down and five minutes later she's screaming and it takes an hour to finally get her to sleep. We do a bath every other night and there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the nights that she goes right to sleep vs the nights she doesn't. What do you do at bedtime that helps get your LO to sleep? We use a white noise machine that she seems to love during the day when she's napping. We've been swaddling, but lately it's been too warm for the 2 receiving blankets (I posted about this yesterday). So tonight we tried putting her in just a onesie and swaddling with only one blanket, but she's still sweaty, so I don't know what to do. I'm kind of at a loss and my poor baby has been screaming for about an hour now.
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Re: What is your bedtime routine?
I was going to say that your LO is just figuring our bedtime and then I saw how young she is! I really feel that babies don't even start to really get consistent about sleep/bedtime until 3 months. And even then, there are plenty of nights when they're "off."
DS is about 13 wks and our schedule right now is that I get his bottle warmed, get him in jammies and swaddle him while DD is brushing her teeth and going potty (I end up running between the kitchen and bathroom but it works). I hold him and give him his bottle while reading her a book and by the time we're finished he's dozing off. I tuck her in and take him to his room to rock him and finish his bottle. It's always a struggle to keep him awake to finish the bottle but it's just 4 ounces so I know he needs it.
He generally wakes at 2:30 and 4:30 for feedings, and then up for good at about 6:15. The past couple of nights he's been up at 1:30 and 4:00. DD didn't start fully sleeping through the night (7:30 p.m. - 6 a.m) until more like 6 months.
Hang in there and keep up what you're doing. She'll figure out bedtime soon enough
We sleep trained DS at 3 1/2 months. He sleeps from 6p to 6a.
At about 5/5:30p, we start the bath...do a 5 - 10 min bath. Heat up the bottle (I EP), walk upstairs and put on jammies and sleep sack. Feed bottle in glider. If he's not too overtired, we'll read books. If he's tired then straight to bed. We just lay him down and he finds his thumb and goes right to sleep. On a rare occassion, he'll cry for 5 minutes.
CIO is so hard!
**edit OK, I wrote before I saw how little DC is! Sorry! At 4 weeks, this was NOT our schedule. But to answer your question, can you just use a Kiddopotomus/Swaddle Me swaddle and no onesie underneath? Or turn on a fan? The crying probably isn't b/c she's hot...I'm not sure though. Good luck!!!
What temperature do you keep your house?
My DD is a little older but our routine is we take a bath between 8pm-9pm, put on a onesie, drink a 4oz bottle, swaddle her in a swaddle me (we do the no escape swaddle so we also have another blanket we use to keep her arms at her side), give her the paci, rock her until she closes her eyes, and the put her in her bouncy seat. Sometimes she will fuss a bit and I'll pick her up and rock her again. She normally sleeps until 4 in the morning. Then we feed her 4 oz, swaddle her again and she's down until 7 or 8.
We were not successful with a bedtime routine until about 3-4 months. DD really created her own bedtime. We watched her cues and started putting her down around 7 p.m., which is when she began acting sleepy. Our bedtime routine include a bath some nights, lotion, rocking and singing. Then into the crib she goes, without complaint.
It was not always this way, though. DD refused to sleep anywhere but in bed with us until two months, and even then she'd only go into her bassinet for a few hours at a time. She didn't start sleeping the whole night in the bassinet until 3 months.
Your baby will get on a schedule when she's ready. Until then, you're just in survival mode!