the routine - moving to the cotbed and big bath

Two weeks ago we moved Hugo into the cotbed in his own room. I felt really emotional. It was such a big step. I know all of the advice is to have him in our room for the first 3-6 months, but he was starting to outgrow the crib and it was waking him up when he hit the sides with his arms, or had them dangling between the rods. A few friends said that they had put their baby in their own room from 6-8 weeks, so around 10 weeks didn't seem too early. It also means that he wasn't too aware of his surroundings when we made the transition.

Because the nursery is so close to us it hasn't been a problem with hearing him, if anything it's good because I'm not quite as quick to jump up and make a bottle and sometimes he'll go back to sleep. That said, I have to be much quicker getting the bottle when he is ready!

He has slept much better since being in his own room - not having Adi snoring must help too! Sometimes he'll sleep for a 6 hour stint and other times he'll wake every 3-4 hours. To encourage the long stint through the night we've started waking him between 11 and 12 to give him a last nappy change and feed. This means that an average night now is sleeping from 8-11-5-8 - give or take.

He also outgrew the baby bath so at the same time we started putting him in the big bath. He absolutely loves splashing about, with no restrictions on the sides.

the routine - a few weeks on

Starting a routine when we did was the best thing we've done so far! Any sooner and it just wouldn't have worked, when he was a teeny tiny newborn he was sleeping more sporadically and it made sense for him to be downstairs with us in the evening until we went to bed. 

We started the routine just as he was able to take a little more food and sleep for longer stints. For the first week he was going down between 10pm - 12pm and waking twice during the night. We managed to put him down while he was awake to fall asleep on his own a couple of times but it was hit and miss. The difficult part of the routine was transferring him from me to the crib without him waking, and I knew that I didn't want to keep this up. We thought that the cold crib unsettled him after being in warm arms, so we decided to introduce the grobag (a sleeping bag for babies) - he was just big enough for it. 

The grobag is now my best friend! I put him down to sleep every night in his grobag and he'll settle himself to sleep without any cries! 

After a week we were able to move forward the time we put him to bed by a couple of hours, so he was going down between 8pm and 9pm. This was because we could see the signs of him getting tired such as rubbing his eyes and felt able to put him to bed upstairs and use the monitor to watch him. As he was now sleeping less in the day and more alert we could make sure he was tired out without having to go for a walk in the evening. We also tried blacking out the room by putting towels over the curtains (we do have a blackout blind to put up, but that's on a long to do list for when Adi's off work!).

He'd wake about 3 times during the night at first and this gradually reduced to twice and now it's often once. On an average night he'll sleep for up to 6 hours, then wake after another 3 hours and then will go down for another couple. 

Due to introducing the bottle and starting a routine Adi has done some night feeds so I've had more sleep and enjoyed a couple of baths without having to jump out to see to Hugo! Bottle feeding definitely has it's upsides! 

starting a routine

Last night we started a bit of a routine. As Hugo is now over one month and we've switched to bottles (mainly expressed milk with the odd bit of formula) it's easier to manage how much milk he's getting and when, so it feels like the right time.

Yesterday I tried to feed every 3 hours and let him fall into a natural sleep routine by staying in the house so that he didnt fall asleep in the car. This was a challenge because his feeding has been so frequent until now so he wanted food much more quickly.

We managed a few feeds 3 hours apart and then the last one before bed was 2.5 hours from the previous. I did use a swing seat to put him to sleep when he was fractious in the afternoon, but he was awake for most of the day.

Our new bedtime routine is as follows:

8.30pm - evening walk or activity to keep him awake! (weather permitting)

9.30pm - stretch out on the play matt to burn off any energy

9.45pm - bath

10pm - bottle

10.20pm - storytime in rocking chair

10.30pm - sleep!

8am - woken up for day to begin!

At the moment I'm letting him fall asleep on me before putting him down. At some point I need to encourage him to fall asleep on his own, but I'll wait until the routine is more fixed. At that point I intend to use music to help too.

Night one went well, he slept from 10.30pm until 2.50am - the longest stretch yet and the earliest he's gone to sleep. He then woke at 6am but didn't manage a whole bottle so was up again at 8am.

Here's hoping we can keep this going and gradually increase the stretches between feeds and put him down to sleep earlier!