DD is officially 4 weeks old and we have literally no sleep routine currently. I know she is young yet, but Im curious what routines and when you began them with your LO's.
Any advice?
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I don't think we had anything remotely resembling a routine till LO was closer to 4 or 5 months old.
Our routine has always been:
- Go into bedroom, turn down light a little bit
- Diaper change, put on PJs
- 2-3 books
- Nurse (now it's a bottle since he's weaned) till he doesn't want any more
- Rock/cuddle for a few minutes
- Into the cribSometimes he'd fall asleep nursing, and we wouldn't worry about it... other times he'd go down drowsy but awake. Nowadays, he's pretty much never fully asleep when I put him down, instead he ranges from very drowsy to still pretty awake (sometimes I'll put him down and he'll sit up and turn on his mobile and play with the toys in his crib for a little while before he lies down and goes to sleep).
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We started our bedtime routine at around 4 weeks. We do the following:
-bath with lullabies playing on iPhone (Coldplay or bob marley lullabies!)
-massage with lotion
-swaddle
-bottle with 2 oz of breast milk
-nurse
-hand off to DH who puts LO in his cribThe whole process takes about 30 minutes.
We started giving the bottle at night a few weeks ago to get LO used to taking a bottle and as a top-off (although the way we do it the nursing is more like the top-off).
95% of the time he goes down drowsy but awake and without a peep. Even if he isn't very drowsy he still goes down with very little fuss!
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It took us a while to get a bed time routine too. I think since she's too little to read books, etc. I felt like it wasn't a routine, but we did do the same thing every night so it is a routine.
-Bath time
-Put on a night time diaper and pj's.
-Brush teeth
-Turn the lights off and the fan on
-Give her a bottle
-Say "night night baby girl I love you." and put her in the crib. -
We started from the very beginning: bath, diaper, pajamas, feed, swaddle, hold/rock for a couple of minutes, bed. We dropped the swaddle at 4 months, and added a story before feeding at 10 months, otherwise we haven't changed much.
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And what time do you begin this all? Were you daily bathing our 4 week olds?
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I think the lighting situation is the most important aspect.
I go into our dimly lit bedroom at about 8pm every night and I feel like that is the only cue I need.
I watch TV and surf the net on my laptop while I breastfeed him a couple times (clusters at night, so those are pretty much back-to-back). When he looks sleepy I just do one more diaper change, and put him into his swaddle sleep sack and put him in his crib. He sleeps. The swaddle is key. If he does not sleep, then I don't fight it. I bring him to sit with me while I watch tv and it's always because he is still hungry and goes for another feeding and I put him down again. He has gone down between 9pm and at the latest 11pm every single night since we got home from the hospital without exception and he is now 6 weeks old.
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