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Sleeping Routine.

"How are you sleeping?" "How tired are you?" "Oh I remember those days of sleepless nights."
All things I am sure we've all heard. Before we even have the baby people are telling you " enjoy your last days of sleeping." Encouraging right? I mean don't get me wrong those first 6 weeks were pretty long and tiring but nothing some coffee or a few cups of coffee can't fix. Right? haha.

Before getting pregnant, I had friends with babies. I saw how well they slept and I knew I wanted that and it was possible to get more sleep then what everyone tells you about. So one of our friends talked to us about sleep training. *Now before you close out of this blog please hear me out and don't just assume that means I let my baby cry it out.* She sent us the link and schedule they followed that worked well for them. My husband and I both had it bookmarked in our notes months before even finding out we were pregnant.

Elly came and guys it was a crazy mad house over here. For 6 weeks I feel like he didn't really sleep more than a few hours at a time. He only would sleep laying on our chest and of course we were waking him every few hours to eat if he didn't wake up before then. Until he got past his birth weight, you know the drill. So for six weeks I feel like I didn't put him down. He was either laying on one of our chests sleeping on the couch or he was in the carrier. Sleep was non existent really.

I knew I wanted to start sleep training but I didn't want to start it until after he was four weeks old. Most sleep training books suggest you just wait until around then. But of course I still couldn't do it. Seven weeks is when I started putting him in his crib to nap... didn't go so well. He did not like the crib. But I knew to be consistent with it. So each day we would do naps in the crib. Now he didn't just lay in there and fall asleep. but i didn't just let him cry.

EAT.PLAY.SLEEP. EAT.PLAY.SLEEP. EAT.PLAY.SLEEP. EAT.PLAY.SLEEP. EAT.PLAY.SLEEP.

Putting your babies awake in their crib is what helps them learn to self sooth to sleep. Elly loves his hands I mean LOVES them so once he would find his hand he would eventually fall asleep. WE DID NOT USE THE CRY IT OUT METHOD. I followed the Ferber Method. It is where you place them in their crib awake. You say sweet things to them and then leave and letting them hear the door close. You set a timer for 3 minutes and you let them move around if they are fussing you don't go in until the timer goes off (it is challenging in the beginning at least for me I never would even let him fuss before this.) once the timer goes off you go into their room and pat them and tell them you love them sing or whatever you chose to do to calm them down. But you never pick them up. Leave the room again and do this over and over again increasing the time each time. For me I would do 3,7,10,15,18,20 minutes. and after a few days of this I was only going in once after 3 or so minutes. So it takes time and all babies are different this is what worked for us.

Elly is about to be four months are goes down for his nap without a fuss and sleeps about 13 hours a night. Of course sometimes he has bad days where all his naps are on me but I'm ok with that. I am not super strict with this schedule its just best for us to follow as best as we can. We do everything in 1.5-2 hour time frames. So from the time he wakes up is when I start our routine. So he wakes up at 7 A.M. feed him and change his diaper and then we play or head down stairs to make our coffee for the day. around 8:30/9 is when I will pit him down for his first nap. He usually wakes up from this around 9:45-10;30 and then we start our circle all over again "EAT.PLAY.SLEEP." We repeat this through out the day. Before bedtime we use to keep him up for 3 hours and that was such a challenge. So now we let him take one last little cat nap before bedtime. We start bedtime routine around 6:30 and he is in bed by 7:00 and asleep within minutes you guys. It is worth it.

That is what we lived by. And thats what we still do. I will link the blog post we followed until we personally found what worked for us ( what I followed sleep schedule ) So let me say he didn't start fully sleeping through the night until about 9-10 weeks. But he started napping three times a day around 7-8 weeks. CONSISTENCY IS KEY. Just like in everything else in life right?
I would just figure out what time you personally want to be able to go to bed and wake up. For us we enjoy an earlier bedtime and earlier wake up. The schedule we were following had bed time around 10 and wake up at 7. But 10 O"clock was way to late for me. Now I don't wake him up from his naps. i let hime nap as long as he needs. He will wake up when he is ready right? So his naps range from one hour to three hours.

Babies do need routines. Before having Elly on any routine he was so FUSSY. Because he didn't sleep well or didn't get longer periods of sleep for whatever reason. Once i started him on a routine he became a much happier little man. He is such a joy. Also he really enjoys his crib, once we moved him to his crib we noticed he slept better.

Thank you guys for reading and if you have any questions please don't heist to ask!Just be patient with yourself and your sweet baby! It will take time.

Oh and one last little thing, try and get them to learn to sleep anywhere. So maybe changing their napping spots. We did this so that he would sleep in a pack n play while we were at friends houses and its been wonder. So we do that as well as noise. I didn't wanna have to stop everything while the baby was sleeping so sound machine and just don't try and be as quite as possible while the are sleeping. Trust me. Now I'm done. Here are some cute photos of Eleazar napping!