It would seem that Tarzan & I have been blessed with our little Monkey. He’s such an angel & I feel lucky that he is such an easy baby. But here’s the thing with this post, I’m not bragging about what a good child he is, so I hope that I don’t come across like I am.
Many of you have asked about Monkey’s nighttime schedule, so I’m sharing this here. Hopefully something of what I say can help your child sleep better at night. Hopefully.
Also, even though I have a very easy baby right now, I wouldn’t always say that. In the beginning it was rough, as you probably remember. I didn’t fall in love, or even like, with my son until he was 7 weeks old. I had postpartum depression. I didn’t want to be near Monkey & the list goes on and on.
I honestly do feel like it’s so easy for us now because it was so rough in the beginning. Like I put my time in at the beginning in order to experience a great feeling being a mom & having a great baby. Or perhaps it’s just luck. Who knows.
Here’s our nightly routine:
Monkey usually wants a bottle somewhere between 4-5pm. If he doesn’t show me signs that he wants a bottle, I make him a few ounces anyway & he eats it. Reason for this is because if he eats any later than 5pm, he won’t finish his last bottle before bed.
After the bottle between 4-5pm, we play like normal.
Monkey takes a bath at 6:30pm. Lately him & I have been taking a bath together because it’s just easier. Easier to get the Head & Shoulders shampoo out of his hair, easier for him to splash in the water, & it seems like he has outgrown the little tub that he was bathing in. We usually stay in the bathtub for 15 minutes. By that time he is ready to get out.
He really is like clockwork.
Tarzan gets him out of the bathtub & dries him off on our bed. I dry myself off & then put lotion on him. This really relaxes him a lot. After the lotion I put his onesie on & then put a sleepsack on him.
Then we go into the living room. The only lights that we have on in the living room & kitchen are a light above the sink & a lamp in the living room. The TV is always on & he looks at it at the beginning, but then gets sleepy with his bottle. It’s not a big deal for him.
I make a bottle with 7oz and feed him on the couch. He seems to fall asleep during drinking the bottle, but he continues to drink. Nine times out of ten he finished the whole 7oz.
After I burp him, he buries his head in my chest & we cuddle. He falls right to sleep. After holding him & savoring this sweetness for 5-10 minutes, I put him in his crib. The past few nights he has not fallen asleep on me & I’ve put him in his crib “drowsy but awake” and within 5 minutes, he is out.
When I put him in his crib, the lights in his nursery are off. I turn on the fan, put him in his crib, and then put on Baby Einstein Lullaby Classics & Baby Einstein Lullaby Classics, Vol. 2. (I burned both on a CD & we play it all night on repeat.)
He sleeps so soundly & well, like a baby all night long. Usually I put him in his crib between 7-7:30pm… It depends on how fast he eats his bottle.
Even though we dim the lights after his bath, we continue to talk at a normal level & he doesn’t seemed phased by it at all. I think we’re pretty lucky in the sense that we can carry on & do normal things while he naps in his swing & sleeps in his crib without having to be quiet.
So, that’s it. I hope that this helps someone with their nightly routine. We really just takes cues from Monkey on what he wants. Two nights ago he was really cranky & tired & went to bed at 6:30pm. It’s crazy how much babies really do thrive on routine.
For those of you that have a routine with your baby – Is this similar to what you do? If there is something different, please tell us what is different. You just never know whether or not you are helping someone else out. Thanks!
You might also want to read:
- Two Month Old Schedule: Three days in the life of little Monkey
- Favorites: Putting Monkey to bed
- Our Baby Feeding Schedule: A day in the life of Tarzan, Jane, and Monkey. Welcome to no sleepville.
- Oh yeah, it’s official: Monkey sleeps through the night!
- Is there a 12 month old sleep regression? Is Monkey just teething? What the &*#* is going on?!
= a post from Mommy Jane 
= a post from Daddy Tarzan
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
You ARE blessed with his routine/schedule but you’re also smart! You started a good thing with the routine right away and putting him to sleep drowsy but awake.
I have a 6 month old and we started a routine within the last 2 or so months…she gets a bath about every other night, is lotioned up, gets her jammies on and wrapped in a swaddle, the lights are dimmed and her lullabye and waterfall sounds are started and she is rocked with a bottle. She *usually* falls asleep to that, but sometimes she needs some more cajoling, which includes bouncing (that is the hard part!) We use an exercise ball for that, but it’s more tumultuous because she may wake up when you set her down in the crib. Not ideal. She goes to bed between 9 & 10, so a bit later than Monkey! Sometimes she sleeps through the night, but most of the time right now she doesn’t (gets up around 3 & 6am). She tends to wake up for the day at 8am.
It used to be very easy, she’d fall asleep on her own in her bouncy seat or just hanging out with us…but then she needed some help, which is why we started the routine.
Routines are SOOO important. At about 2-3 months old I got the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Although the book didnt really help me much, the only principal that stuck out to me was “Sleep begates sleep” The more they sleep the better they sleep. Until that point we were trying to keep our son up until 10pm or 11pm so that he was really tired. The night after I read the book I said “Lets try putting him to bed early. Even if he wakes up 2-3 hours later, at least we will have had the evening to ourselves.” We put him to bed at 6:30 that night. He slept until 7am. The first time he EVER slept all the way through the night and he never looked back.
You have to do the same thing every night. Our son is like clock work too, sometimes we loose track of time and cant figure out why he’s starting to get grumpy, when we realize its 3 minutes past time for bath. Doing bathtime EVERY night helps us so much too. He wont sleep soundly unless we do the whole routine.
Bath, getting dressed, medicine, then we walk around the room and turn on his mobile, and his cd player and pick up his bottle before we sit down in the rocking chair. We almost always put him into bed awake. (sometimes we just cant resist rocking him to sleep)
One other important point is that typically formula fed babies sleep better than breast fed babies because formula sits in their stomaches longer and they are insured to get a full bottle. At about 3 months we made the decision that he would always get a pumped bottle of breast milk at night. So we could make sure he was getting nice and full. That really changed things for us also. And it is a great time for Daddy to do some bonding also.
We have a daughter who is Monkey’s age and we are following a very similar routine. I work outside the home and we also have a two year old so our evening routine is slightly more chaotic. My husband doesn’t quite get the whole “dim lights, follow routine, but we are working on it. I am still nursing so I nurse her from 8-9, put her in her bed with the Ocean Wonders thing on. She sleeps until 2-3 a.m., I get up nurse again and then she sleeps until I wake her up at 6 a.m. for the day. I’d put her to sleep earlier but I wouldn’t have any time with her in the evening, plus, my husband and I get some time after 9 p.m. and I know when I start doing formula only, things will change a bit.
I don’t have a little one yet, but when I do I can only HOPE he or she will fall into a regular pattern like this. I thrive on schedules, so I hope my baby will too
Does anyone have any tips for TWINS?
Our routine is similar. G is 17 months old. We usually don’t eat dinner til 6, and after dinner comes a bath, lotion, and some play time. At 7:45ish, we brush teeth, find binkie and “face blanket” and then settle in the rocker to read 2-4 books (depending on how patient I’m feeling:)). She gets one last drink of water, we go into her dark room, I flick on the night light, start the lullabies (we have Disney Lullabies 1 & 2), give hugs and kisses, and then I lay her in her crib. Sometimes this gets pushed back a whole hour if we’re doing something and I think she can handle it, other times she’s so tired and cranky that she’s in bed by 7:30. Usually, she sleeps until 7:30-8:00am, straight through.
We used to have BIG problems with her only falling asleep if I was holding her, and so we started the routine to help with that. Even now, if she whines when I put her in bed, she’s usually quiet by the time I get back to the living room – so less than 30 seconds. Having a nighttime routine also helped with nap time. And I really think for us, the lullabies do the trick. The music means it’s time to rest, so they go on during nap too.
Thats almost exactly the same as our bedtime routine, except we also have a story and a few lullabys thrown in. (and boobies instead of bottle). Unfortunately – (and this is for all you expectant mama’s who thing that it will work out just fine if only you do a bedtime routine) – despite doing this every single night for the last 4months, putting her down drowsy but awake, our baby still wakes up every 2hrs overnight.
Just goes to show that you can do everything “by the book” and still not get a full nights sleep.
for what its worth, I don’t even feel tired during the day despite only sleeping in 1-2hr increments. The body just adjusts!
I could follow a routine EVERY night…and still end up with different results EVERY night. Wait…that is what I do already! ha!
At just about three months old, my Peanut has slept through the night twice…after being put down at 10pm. Most nights, she sleeps in two to five hour increments (the first increment being the longest…and the second being pretty short). Last night? Well, last night I put her down at 10pm. She wanted her pacifier at 10:30pm. Fell asleep on her own, per the usual. Woke up at ONE AM!! WTF? Then after a small formula “snack” and a diaper change and vertical time…she went back down for 3.5 hours. Not ideal, I can tell you that much.
However, at just shy of three months old, my Peanut only weighs about 10 pounds. She was a month early and suffers from reflux. I can’t expect miracles from her right away, I guess. I hope that in the next month or two, though, that she does start sleeping more. Longer sleeping baby equals happier mommy!
Our routine is somewhat similar except that my little guy (a couple weeks older than Monkey) goes to bed later because my husband and I work until evening and want at least a little time with him in the evening! We do a bath (or shower which, strangely, he loves) every night for consistency starting sometime between 9:30-10:30 depending on when he gets fussy. After bathtime, I give him a lotion massage unless he’s crying, then dress him and read him a story. After storytime, he takes a bottle of breastmilk to make sure he gets enough at night (he’ll take anywhere from 1-8 oz at this feeding before dozing off). Once he’s settled down, I swaddle him with his arms in and put him in his crib.
He was sleeping 6-8 hours at a stretch when he was 6 weeks old but a cold, plane trip, and then the flu threw things off and now he’s back to only 3-4 hours at a stretch. As you can see, we’re less schedule driven than many families but it worked well for us until chaos hit. We’re just sticking to the same routine and hoping he gets back to sleeping better. I think I’m going to try the lullabies and see if they make a difference!
We have a similar routine too for my 3 month old…. bath at 6pm, a feed and then usually asleep by 7pm. We swaddle using the Miracle Blanket (though my husband likes the Cloud B blanket.. same makers of the sleep sheep). And baby either is asleep until sometime between 4-6am- straight, or wakes up once or twice for a feed (usually 11pm and/or 3am). If he does wake, its less than 20 minutes to feed and he is back to sleep.
Our music choice these days between 6-7pm is our Rockabye Baby CD– we have the Beatles and Eagles, and I am thinking of getting a few more… I enjoy humming to the soft music tunes of famous bands. http://www.rockabyebabymusic.com
I LOVE the Rockabye Baby CDs (for me more than the little one . . .she doesn’t seem to care either way!)
For anyone really struggling, I highly recommend the book “Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old”. I read it before giving birth and then re-read it when my baby was about 3 weeks old. It’s a quick quick read and easily laid out.
My daughter is 7 weeks old and she has been consistently sleeping 8-10 hours at night for 2 1/2 weeks. Only twice she has woken up to be fed in the middle of the night; most nights if she stirs at all we can just put her pacifier in and she drifts off within seconds. Last night we struggled to get her to sleep, but once we did, she was out for 10 hours with no feeding and one pacifier replacement.
I’m not bragging. I’m more THANKFUL than anything . . .her sleeping well has let me retain my sanity. But I seriously could not have done it without that book. I had no idea how to get my baby on a schedule or how to wean her off of night feedings, or even how much formula to give her. This book made it easier for me to understand what I needed to do.
I don’t return to work for 2 more weeks, and once I do I know that our schedule has to become a lot more rigid (for her sake and ours), but I’m not really concerned about it because I feel confident enough in the “sleep training” we’ve been able to enforce so far.
A word of caution, though . . .my daughter was a big baby (10 lbs 2 oz) at birth, and I understand that big babies are better sleepers, so it may take longer to get a smaller baby to sleep for longer stretches, although that is addressed in the book. It’s also helpful for twins–the friend who gave me the book has twins who are now 8 months old. One was sleeping in 12 hour stretches by 10 weeks; the other by 15 weeks.
I’ve heard a lot about the Einstein cd’s….. I have one that I play through headphones on my belly…. I think it’s cute
My three month old has exactly the same routine, except I breastfeed. He still gets up at least twice a night, so it’s important to note that it truly does vary–despite the routine!
I think you might have read the bedtime routine post on my blog, but really I swear the routine helps my sanity! And I really cherish bedtime with my son!
Glad to know you are doing well
We cant do a bath at bedtime because it works him up more than anything. he absolutely hates being messed with. So we start the night by dimming the lights in the house in the evening, it all depends on when he last ate. If he wakes up and eats at 7, we need to wait until 8 to start bedtime because it is critical that we feed him before bed.
So we start by dimming all the lights in the house (this helps mommy unwind too!)wiping him down with a warm cloth gently, lotion him up, change his diaper, and get him into PJS. We will put on his soother mobile while we do this and that has soft music and soft lights. Then I will feed him a warm bottle and by now he is really dozing off. Then Ill swaddle him up and lay him in his crib. THis is the frustrating part, he HATES laying on his back, so I have to stand there sometimes for an hour or more, jiggling the crib mattress so it rocks him to sleep. Because if I rocked him in my arms he would wake up the second I laid him down.