I'm up past my bedtime tonight to talk about Fallon's bedtime routine. Before we left the NICU and brought our baby girl home we got to give her the first bath. The nurse was telling us that babies do not need baths every day but sometimes it can be helpful to relax them before bed. I had heard from many people that creating a bedtime routine was so, so helpful for both parents and babes so Chris and I decided to jump on the wagon.
Fallon's umbilical cord took a few weeks to come off so we just bathed her with a wet rag a handful of times during that period. And she hated every second of it. The first night we were finally able to give her a sink bath with her baby tub we figured she would hate that too. We were wrong. She actually LOVED it. She was so happy and really enjoyed being in the water. But we quickly discovered she did not like being taken out of the water. She screamed like the air was on fire. It was all kinds of fun trying to get her lotion and pjs on while having our eardrums blown. And then one night she decided it was actually kind of nice to be wrapped up in a cozy towel and have lotion rubbed on her. So now we all look forward to the bedtime routine.
Around 7PM we kick things off with a bath. If it's been a super crappy day and Fallon is just all kinds of fussy at 6:30, we start then, but I try to hold her off until 7. Typically Chris is sleeping upstairs so we've just made it part of the routine to use the first floor bathroom. This tub fits perfectly in the sink and Fallon loves to just relax in the warm water for a while. She usually sticks her hands under the faucet at some point and sprays water everywhere. I give her 10-15 minutes and then wash her with Tubby Todd soap. I've learned to take her out of the tub before I turn off the water or she totally loses her shit. Yea, we've got a diva on a hands. I wrap her up and bring her out to the living room and lay her on the couch. I have everything I need set out and ready to go so we move right to the next step of covering her in lotion. She usually babbles while I do this and it's pretty damn cute.
I slip this little guy on her foot then put her in her pjs and we go onto the next step, the boob. I used let her nurse right to sleep and then put her to bed but now that she's a little older, I don't want her to need to nurse to bed. So now she nurses and then we snuggle. After a rough transition to her crib, we went with the recommendation for this swaddle blanket and it's worked like a charm. I swaddle her up and either cuddle on the couch or head upstairs to her room to rock in the rocker. By 8 I lay her down sleepy in her crib and she usually drifts right off to dream land.
Having this routine keeps Chris and I on schedule and has helped Fallon understand when it is time to sleep for the night as she has gotten older. We try to stick to this sequence of events of every night but we also believe in teaching flexibility so now that she is used to sleeping in her own room, we will start mixing things up a bit here and there. So far our bedtime routine has been working out extremely well and I'm really glad we started it from the beginning.
Do you have a bedtime routine for your kiddos?
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