Bedtime routine

I think I mentioned in my last post that sleep has been a concern of mine lately. More like lack of sleep- for both me and my baby, but she is the one I am concerned about. However, over the past couple of days she has been starting to take longer naps on her own, and even fall asleep earlier than normal at night, so I think she also may have realized she needs more sleep! I decided to take advantage of the new bedtime tonight and try to start a bedtime routine.

Our current routine: 9:30ish see signs of hunger, change baby into pajamas, turn off lights, nurse to sleep. When I think bedtime routine, though, I think of bath, massage, book, etc. We've tried this before, and both times it was very, very unsuccessful. The couple of times we started trying a bedtime routine at 8pm, and, no matter what we tried, Baby ended up going to sleep after 10 pm and after a stressful couple of hours for us. Since she has fallen asleep on her own relatively early the past couple of nights, however, we tried the whole bedtime routine again.

If you don't want the many details, here's the basic routine (and skip the next paragraph): 7pm-bath; 7:30 changing table time; 7:35 massage with lotion, pajamas, books; 7:40ish nurse to sleep.

At 7 pm tonight, we started our routine with a bath using some bedtime stuff in the water. We don't usually do baths- we typically grab baby at the end of our shower and bring her in for a quick shower of her own. This takes about 2 minutes and she doesn't mind it at all, so it's worked well for us. The past bedtime bath attempts were done in the kitchen sink and she screamed... this time we used the tub, and she LOVED it! I think she would've stayed in there for an hour or more if we'd let her. She played in the bath for about 30 minutes, splashing, kicking, and smiling a ton. After that we went in her room and cleaned her earrings, put on a fresh diaper, and played for a few minutes on the changing table- her favorite place in the world. Next was massage time in our bed, which was quick because she is really wiggly and refuses to stay on her back. After putting on pajamas, we read half of The Giving Tree before she got bored, her my colors/mis colores book (one of her favorites), and then Mr. B read Goodnight Moon while I nursed her lying down. She was done eating and fast asleep by 8!

I was very happy thinking we were successful, however when Mr. B moved baby to the pnp in our room where she sleeps, she woke up. After about 10 min trying to get her back to sleep, I nursed her again and put her in the pnp myself. 10 minutes after that she woke up again. This time it took about 15 minutes to get her back to sleep using patting and shushing, and she seems to be sleeping deeply now!

I think our routine was successful... we'll see how it works tomorrow. Today was a good nap day too, so I think that helped. Baby woke up for the day at around 7:30, napped from 11:30-1:30(!!!), and then napped again from 4:45-5:15. Two and a half hours of naps is a lot for her, so I am happy about that! I'm anxious to see how tonight goes, and how naps go tomorrow and whether or not she will do so well with the new routine tomorrow night!