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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
help with bedtime routine sans bath, please!
DD is 16 weeks. I'm about ready to try to introduce a little more structure into her sleep habits, starting with a good bedtime routine. Bathtime gets her excited, so that's out. Also, she usually nurses when she wakes up, so sometimes she won't nurse before sleep. So, here are the variables I have to work with: jammies, night diaper change, paci. What else should I add?
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Re: help with bedtime routine sans bath, please!
We do a massage. Sometimes with lotion, sometimes just on top of her clothes. I also sing her a night time song. We do some "baby yoga" to help push out any gas that might have built up before bed time. And sometimes a story.
Ours isn't super structured. Sometimes she gets the story, sometimes not. Sometimes she falls asleep before the massage, sometimes not. She always gets jammies/diaper, always the song, always nurses, and she always gets some cuddles.
Except on those nights when we were out or something else interfered and she fell asleep in her clothes before we did any routine. And then she'll just get a fresh diaper if she stirs awake or when she gets up to nurse.
We start with the bath since my LO also gets all worked up about it. Then we do lotion and PJs. Then I nurse her to get one last feeding in to help her sleep longer, haha! She nurses well since she's awake from the bathtime.
Then I hand her off to DH who plays the same song on the ipod and walks around the house with her wrapped in a sleepsack or swaddleme. He does that for ~10 minutes, then puts her down.
I want to add in a story b/c she's been batting at the pages of books when I show them to her. Probably after nursing but before the song.
Bath, lotion/massage, jammies, sleep sack, dim lights, breastfeed. While I am feeding DD, DH reads her a story. He kisses her goodnight, and goes downstairs. When finished eating, I will burp her and lay her down in the crib.
On nights that we don't do a bath, we follow everything else the same.
Oh yeah, while we are taking off DD's daytime clothes (before the bath but still in her diaper), we always play with her a little bit on the changing table. Kiss her belly, how big is baby - so big!, etc...anything to get some giggles and smiles out of her!