Sleep Routine

When coming home from the hospital with a new baby, especially as a first time parent, you have to figure things out on your own. Of course that's obvious. Some things are just easy to know what to do (not that they're easy to do in fact), like when the baby cries, either feed him, change him, just wants to be held, burp him. When it comes to going down for the night, how do you establish this?

At first it seemed like Bruce had his days/nights backwards. I'm sure it was all the same in the womb and really he probably did sleep more during the day since I was more active, so he was being rocked in there. At night I wasn't moving, he probably was most active. After a few weeks, I'm thinking around 3, maybe 4, he started sleeping thru the night. Well he was being put down about 10:30-11 and sleeping til 5 or 6.

During the evening is when he's most fussy. I figured he's tired so I should try putting him down earlier. Plus, hubby goes to bed about 10-10:30, I kinda want to go to bed too! I started trying to put him down a half hour earlier, then earlier and earlier. Now I'm pretty much putting him down at 8:30pm! A downfall is that I don't know if I can say he sleeps thru the night really. I say he does, kinda. He gets a good amount of sleep, it's just that he goes down early, the wake time is earler. So last night for instance, put him down at 8:30 I think it was, then he woke up at 4. I change him, nurse him, lay him back in his crib. Then I pump the side he didn't do. By the time I was done pumping, he was asleep. I go back to bed too. I'm not sure when he got up today since hubby tended him, but I have to feed him. I think he got me at 9am.

Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays are bath nights. I do this around 8pm, unless I think he's getting tired sooner. The other nights, when I do a diaper change around 7 or so, I then change him into his jammies.

Also one thing that has been working, I'm hoping it continues. I will lay him down in his crib, start his mobile. I'll sit in the rocking chair. When the mobile is done, I wind it up again, turn the lamp off and leave the room. He might stir around for a half hour but he falls asleep.

I just don't know how we go anywhere, but it seems like its a good time of year, Thanksgiving isn't for another month and a half. There is a birthday get together next week in my family but it's on bowling night. Even if it there wasn't bowling I wouldn't want to go. Going to a restaurant isn't easy. Dinner at 6 or 6:30pm, I think would make it even harder to eat at the restaurant, it's hard enough to eat dinner at home!